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Malaysia Opposes U.S. Help in Straits of Malacca
Malaysia yesterday reiterated its opposition to receiving U.S. assistance in policing the pirate-infested Straits of Malacca, but said it would discuss maritime security with U.S. officials, the Associated Press reported (see GSN, June 3). Defense Minister Najib Tun Razak said his country would not allow U.S. “troops or assets” into the narrow 550-mile-long waterway connecting Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore that handles a third of the world’s sea-based commerce and more than half its oil. “What we should avoid is the presence of foreign forces in Southeast Asia, not because we distrust those from outside the region, but because a foreign military presence will set us back in our ideological battle against extremism and militancy,” Najib said, according to the Associated Press. “It will be counterproductive to have foreign ships, or assets in the region. The actual interdiction (of suspect vessels) will be done by the littoral states,” he went on. He added that his country would hold talks on the U.S. proposal to increase security in the straits. The commander of U.S. forces in the Pacific, Adm. Thomas Fargo, is expected to lead discussions on the Regional Maritime Security Initiative in Malaysia this month, according to Najib. Both the United States and Singapore fear the straits are a prime target for terrorists who could use suicide attackers to ram speedboats into ships or hijack tankers and sail them into ports, according to the Associated Press. U.S. Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld on Friday warned that, despite successes in disrupting terrorist networks, the United States and its allies are “still closer to the beginning of this global struggle … than we are to its end.” Rumsfeld compared the struggle against modern Islamic terrorists to the war against the Barbary Pirates in the 18th and 19th centuries. “While the enemy we fight is new and different in many ways, they are in a sense merely the latest in a long line of despots and zealots who seek to destroy free, democratic systems to replace the law of the people with the rule of terrorists and the dictator,” he said (U.S. Defense Department release, June 4). Najib criticized Rumsfeld’s comments the next day, saying Southeast Asian nations had faced a terrorist problem long before Sept. 11, 2001, and that U.S. President George W. Bush’s unconditional support for Israel was contributing to global terrorism, according to the Associated Press. “Is there a link between Islam and terrorism, given that so many terrorist groups seem to use Islam as their rallying cry?” Najib said. “Perhaps there is one, but only because we have allowed such terrorist groups to combine their purely domestic grievances with the larger injustices committed against Muslims in the Middle East. Let there be no doubt, there is more to come if we continue to ignore the need for a balanced approach to this campaign against terror,” he added (Yeoh En-Lai, Associated Press/Indiana Gazette, June 6).
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