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UN launches global initiative to defend Malacca straits
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| 25 January 2005 |
UN launches global initiative to defend Malacca straits
By Thomas Ország-Land
Security analysts fear that preparations for a major seaborne terrorist assault on world trade have already reached an advanced stage. Jane’s Terrorism & Security Monitor assesses a UN initiative to secure the world’s shipping lanes.
The omens are good for a compromise solution to emerge at a Jakarta conference organised by the UN to work out arrangements for securing a third of the global seaborne trade passing through the vulnerable, overcrowded shipping lanes of the Strait of Malacca. Security experts fear that a single, well placed terrorist assault in the straits could dislodge world trade for perhaps several weeks.
Citing principles of national sovereignty, the littoral states of Singapore, Indonesia and Malaysia have collectively declined US offers to police the straits. Instead, they have just a launched a regional security operation based on 20 patrol vessels to cover an archipelago of tens of thousands of islands.
But big oil-importing countries such as Japan, China, India and South Korea, which rely on the Malacca trade route, demand reliable security. The US, which does not insist on the physical participation of its navy in a regional security operation, would be pleased to support it by such acceptable alternative means as training and advice as well as intelligence, data and technology transfer.
And the three littoral states do not speak with the same voice. Hence the call issued by the International Maritime Organization (IMO) of the UN for a ministerial conference to be held as soon as possible to work out acceptable collaborative arrangements to secure the shipping lanes. The scheme may well begin with a series of joint naval exercises hosted by the Malacca neighbours and involving the principal users of the waterway.
Singapore accepts an American worst-case scenario that international terrorists are poised to strike at the export arteries of the global economy by sinking an oil tanker at the narrowest point of the straits (1.5 km). Tony Tan, Singapore's deputy prime minister, told a recent regional security conference organised there by the London-based International Institute for Strategic Studies that a ship sunk in the right spot "would cripple world trade". An alternative nightmare scenario projected by security analysts is the deployment of a liquefied natural gas tanker as a floating bomb.
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