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.