Singapore, Malaysia practice chemical attack response

Singapore, Malaysia practice chemical attack response

Associated Press, Singapore/Sydney, Australia

Singaporean and Malaysian rescue workers lumbering in red and yellow protective suits practiced responding to chemical attacks and spills on Thursday on a bridge linking the two countries.

Fear of terrorist attacks has brought together the neighboring countries, prone to disagree over many other issues.

"Post 9/11, a lot has been going on, but we are confident we can deal with the (toxic terror) issue," said Malaysian Police Superintendent Tan Soon Fuan.

The two countries have stepped up security ties between themselves and Indonesia following recent terror attacks in the region, including the Oct. 12 bombings in Bali, Indonesia, which killed nearly 200 people.

Singapore thwarted a plot by Jamaah Islamiyah, a group allied to al-Qaeda, to attack Western embassies, U.S. Navy ships and other targets in the island nation a year ago.

"We are quietly confident we can deal with toxic issues but we have to conduct these exercises regularly and not be lulled into a false sense on confidence," said Lam Joon Khoi, head of Singapore's National Environment Agency, which supervised the chemical clean-up drill.

The neighbors simulated a chlorine gas spill at their land link in Tuas, with more than 100 police, fire department, hazardous material response units and coast guard personnel from both nations participating in the three-hour drill.

Forty thousand metric tons (44,000 tons) of hazardous materials cross the Tuas link each year, Singapore authorities said. Stringent inspections take place on both sides of the border.

Singapore and Malaysia have close social and economic ties and share generally polite relations. But the Southeast Asian countries have clashed on several issues, ranging from a long- running water supply dispute to a 1979 claim over a small islet lying at the eastern entrance of the Singapore Straits.

Both are also dealing with several less-contentious disagreements over border crossings, airspace, pension savings and railway land.

The two former British colonies were federated in 1963 but split amid bitter political disagreements two years later.

Separately on Thursday, Australia's armed police and other emergency services also practiced their counterterrorism skills, saving a mock hostage and defusing a bomb during an exercise in Sydney.

But New South Wales state political leader Bob Carr said the operation proved there were still kinks to iron out in their capacity to respond to a terrorist attack.

Police, bomb technicians, fire officials and hazardous materials experts joined the exercise in which a gun-wielding mock terrorist took a man hostage in a high-rise building in the inner Sydney suburb of Alexandria.

Bomb technicians were also called in to stimulate defusing an explosive device and hazardous materials units practiced neutralizing chemical threats. Carr said the exercise simulated the actual conditions emergency services would face in the event of such a threat in Australia.

Australia has been on heightened alert since the Bali bombings which killed more than 180 people, 88 of them Australian tourists.

Last month the federal government said it had received "credible threats" of a terrorist attack in Australia over the next couple of months.