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.