U.S., RI urged to boost maritime security

U.S., RI urged to boost maritime security

Reuters, Washington

The United States and Indonesia should boost intelligence and security cooperation to stem maritime terrorism in heavily traveled sea lanes around the vulnerable Southeast Asian archipelago, a study published on Wednesday said.

The study sponsored by the U.S.-Indonesia Society urged Washington to allocate US$30 million over five years to help the Indonesian navy beef up communications, intelligence and operations in the region, through which much of the world's trade moves.

"The U.S. should make maritime security a priority issue in our relations with Indonesia," said study author Bronson Percival, a terrorism expert at the Center for Naval Analysis.

Describing the waters surrounding Indonesia as the "most dangerous in the world", he said the piracy-plagued Strait of Malacca, which is bordered by Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore, was particularly vulnerable to attack by light boats or mines.

"Pirates in the Strait of Malacca have proved how easy it would be for maritime terrorists to operate there," Percival said in a presentation in Washington of his report Indonesia and the United States: Shared Interests in Maritime Security.

The potential economic costs of terrorism would be high, with 40 percent of world trade, 80 percent of Japan's and South Korea's oil and gas and 80 percent of China's oil passing through the Strait, he said.

"No one knows what those economic costs would be; certainly it would send a shock through those neighboring economies," Percival said.

The study recommended that to help reorganize Indonesia's maritime security efforts, the United States should increase this year's $1 million in foreign military financing for the navy to $6 million a year for five years.

Percival said the Indonesian navy is "not tagged with human rights concerns" that have hindered U.S. cooperation with the Indonesian army, which has been accused of grave rights abuses across the vast, multiethnic island nation.

Last month, the United States lifted a ban on sales of nonlethal military equipment to Indonesia, but said full normalization of military ties with the world's most populous Muslim country required the punishment of soldiers implicated in past human rights abuses.