Terrorist threat imperils SE Asian prosperity: S'pore
Terrorist threat imperils SE Asian prosperity: S'pore
Agencies, Bangkok
Southeast Asian nations must unite against the terrorist threat if they hope to lift the region out of its lingering economic malaise, Singapore's Home Affairs Minister Wong Kan Seng said on Sunday.
Wong told a conference of Asian parliamentarians that the region was facing tough times, ignored by investors and dogged by the 1997 economic crisis which it has failed to shake off.
"Any hope for a gingerly recovery as we turned around the last century was dashed when a new threat confronted the world on September 11 last year," he said.
And illusions that the specter of terrorism was confined to the Middle East or targets in the Western world were smashed by last month's bombings in Bali, which "painfully punctured all such self-denial and self-delusion."
"So long as our collective regional security is at stake, the road to our economic recovery is paved with land-mines. None of us can really pull ourselves out of the gloom which threatens to hang over the region," he said.
Wong said that as the long battle against terrorism in the region began, each country had to find ways to avert the threat of violence and check religious extremism within Islamic communities.
Every country had a "responsibility to ensure that terrorism in its domain is not exported to threaten the lives of the citizens of other nations or to undermine the security and stability of the region."
With a nod to the region's policy of non-interference in other nation's affairs, he urged Singapore's neighbors to take "concrete and direct collaborative action" against terrorism.
"We have to cooperate. Our economic recovery and security are intertwined. If we handle our security issues right, we will be able to present to the rest of the world a region which is stable and effective in coping with any threat.
"Then economic and political confidence in the region will be strengthened and the prospect of our coming out of the woods will be a more certain and confident outcome... Otherwise, our region will be simply overlooked and by-passed."
Singapore is a key U.S. ally in Southeast Asia in the fight against global terrorism and provides logistical support to the U.S. navy.
It has arrested 31 suspected religious militants in connection with an alleged plot to bomb targets in the city-state, including the U.S. embassy, other foreign missions as well as the Singapore defense ministry.
Neighboring Malaysia and the Philippines have also made similar arrests while Indonesia has toughened its stance on extremists following the Oct. 12 car bomb massacre in Bali, which killed more than 190 people.
Meanwhile, the political parties from 25 Asian nations on Sunday voiced opposition to unilateral armed action in fighting terrorism, stressing that the United Nations should play the lead role.
"We all support a multilateral approach to resolving the issue of terrorism or to combating terrorism and not a unilateral action," Thai Foreign Minister Surakiart Sathirathai told a press conference concluding a conference of 77 Asian political parties.
Economic and political issues, terrorism and the possibility of a U.S.-led attack on Iraq were on the agenda of the three-day International Conference of Asian Political Parties, which aimed to increase cooperation among Asian political parties.