U.S. wants to help guard waters of SE Asia

U.S. wants to help guard waters of SE Asia

Associated Press, Port Klang, Malaysia

The U.S. military is deeply concerned about piracy and possible terrorist attacks in the world's commercial shipping lanes and wants to help countries responsible for policing them, an American Navy commander said on Tuesday.

But Cmdr. Steven A. Mucklow, skipper of the destroyer USS Cushing, declined to comment directly on the idea that U.S. forces could be deployed in Southeast Asia's Malacca Straits - one of the world's busiest and most strategic waterways that has been hit by rising piracy and is considered vulnerable to terrorism.

Both Indonesia and Malaysia, which each handle security on their side of the sea border in the straits, have responded to unconfirmed reports that Washington wants to send U.S. Marine fast-response units to help keep peace in the straits by saying deploying foreign troops in their territory would threaten their sovereign rights.

"As a general matter of the U.S. Navy, we are very concerned about the anti-piracy efforts and maintaining regional security in areas such as the Straits of Malacca," Mucklow told reporters in Malaysia during a port visit by the Cushing.

"Certainly we support and work with the countries in maintaining overall regional security posture, that is in everyone's best interests," he said, when asked about the possibility of U.S. forces patrolling the straits.

The Malacca Straits form a narrow, 900-kilometer corridor between peninsular Malaysia and Indonesia's Sumatra island that is a bottleneck between ports in East Asia, Europe and the Middle East.

U.S. commander in the Pacific, Adm. Thomas B. Fargo said at a congressional hearing last month that "the ungoverned littoral regions of Southeast Asia are fertile ground for exploitation by transnational threats like proliferation, terrorism, trafficking in humans or drugs, and piracy."

Washington is working with regional governments on a joint initiative to combat such threats, including developing "the right kinds of immediately available, expeditionary forces to take action when the decision has been made to do so," he said.

In a statement, the U.S. Embassy in Malaysia said Fargo had been misinterpreted in some reports and explained that he did not say U.S. forces would be deployed in the Straits of Malacca, and that the initiative would be conducted within existing international laws.

Southeast Asian waters are among the most dangerous in the world for pirate attacks, many of which occur in the straits off Indonesia's Aceh province and are blamed on separatists who use the proceeds to fund their decades-old fight against government forces.