Southeast Asia eyes bigger UN maritime security role
Southeast Asia eyes bigger UN maritime security role
Jason Szep, Reuters/Singapore
Southeast Asian defense leaders and U.S. coast guard officials discussed on Wednesday a possible expansion of the UN role in securing the critical Malacca Strait waterway against sea pirates and terrorists.
At a maritime security conference hosted by Southeast Asian governments and the United States, Singapore's defense minister, Teo Chee Hean, said stronger security cooperation was needed in the region's vital sea lanes.
In July the Indonesian, Singaporean and Malaysian navies began coordinated, 24-hour patrols of the narrow, congested Malacca Strait, which carries more than a quarter of world trade and almost all oil imports from the Middle East to Japan and China.
"This has already scored some early successes," Teo said without elaborating in a speech that was open to media before the start of closed-door sessions.
Officials said a central theme was how Southeast Asia, Washington and powers outside the region can secure the Malacca Strait without compromising the sovereignty of the three littoral states -- Singapore, Malaysia and Indonesia.
One possibility is an expanded role for the UN's International Maritime Organization (IMO) in partnership with Southeast Asia and the United States, said the commander of the U.S. Coast Guard Pacific Area, Vice Adm. Harvey Johnson.
"There is a need for a central body that can help facilitate communication between the three littoral states," Johnson told Reuters on the sidelines of the meeting. "This would be the IMO. It can help keep the littoral states from working in isolation."
IMO Secretary General Efthimios Mitropoulos said Southeast Asia could work with outside powers by sharing information and intelligence between naval agencies and, eventually, jointly coordinating coast guards and maritime police in the strait.
"Common sense tells us that you cannot achieve security in isolation," he told the forum in a speech. "This is an issue that clearly involves wider interests and a greater stakeholder community, and it would be disingenuous to suggest otherwise."
U.S. offers to help secure the strait have aroused suspicion in some of the three littoral nations that Washington wants its forces to play a role in safeguarding the waterway. But Johnson said U.S. warships had no plan to patrol the strait.
Malaysia and Indonesia have cited concerns in the past over sovereignty, pointing out that the waters in the strait -- a haunt for pirates for centuries and just a few nautical miles wide in places -- are mostly national, not international.
Singapore has repeatedly warned of potential links between sea pirates and militant networks such as Jamaah Islamiyah, blamed for the deadly 2002 bomb blasts on the Indonesian island of Bali and widely linked to Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda.
Piracy in the area was dealt a body blow by the tsunami that tore through the Indian Ocean in late December, but experts doubt it is gone for good. The Malacca Strait and the waters around Indonesia were ranked the world's most dangerous last year for piracy and armed robbery.
As if to underscore those fears, authorities reported on Wednesday the first incident of piracy in the Malacca Strait this year. Gun-wielding pirates attacked a Malaysian tugboat on Monday, kidnapping its captain and chief officer.
"We had hoped that it (the tsunami) had wiped out the pirates' assets like boats and guns, but they are surfacing again," said Noel Choong, regional manager of the International Maritime Bureau's piracy reporting center in Kuala Lumpur.
The wealthy island of Singapore has much at stake, operating the world's second-busiest port after Hong Kong. The maritime industry generates 6-7 percent of Singapore's US$110 billion economy and employs nearly 6 percent of its workforce.
Singapore authorities have warned of a particularly deadly scenario -- a tanker ship laden with liquefied natural gas or lethal chemicals hijacked by terrorists and used as a "floating bomb" against its port, killing thousands and choking trade.
Wednesday's meetings are part of a wider ASEAN Regional Forum, a grouping long seen as ineffectual and ruled by the principle of non-interference and a readiness only to move at the speed of its slowest member.
But ASEAN (the Association of Southeast Asian Nations) -- grouping Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia, Brunei, Singapore, Thailand, Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and Myanmar -- has been growing quietly more forceful behind closed doors, looking at regional maritime safety and intelligence exchanges.