Armed escort vessels will be allowed to pass through Malaysia's stretch of the Malacca Strait although their operations must be strictly controlled, Malaysian Defense Minister Najib Razak said yesterday.
Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi and other senior defense officials have been outspoken recently in their opposition to privately armed vessels providing security for commercial ships in the pirate-infested strait.
However Najib, who is also deputy prime minister, told a regional security conference in Singapore that Malaysia would reluctantly allow them to "transit" through its waters.
"These services should be provided outside of our territorial waters, and remain consistent with international law," Najib told the Asia Security conference, attended by more than 20 Asia-Pacific defense ministers.
"[But] given the nature of the strait, it is very likely that these escort services will at some point or another enter territorial waters.
"We are obliged under the straits regime to allow them transit passage, that is passage that should be continuous and expeditious."
Najib said Malaysia was concerned about the possibility of the armed escorts services using large, "offensive" weapons.
"The role of private security companies should be controlled and regulated and they should not impinge on our national sovereignty," he said.
Malaysia's director of internal security, Othman Talib, told the Bernama news agency in late April that any ship providing private armed escort services to merchant vessels in the Malacca Strait would be detained.
The crew of such vessels could be categorized as "terrorists" or "mercenaries" and charged under the Internal Security Act, Othman said, according to Bernama.
"They have no power in this country and it is a violation of our territorial sovereignty," he said.
One of the security companies that has been operating in the Malacca Strait, Singapore-based Background Asia Risk Solutions, has insisted throughout the controversy that its operations are legal because of the "transit" clause.
Background Asia, which describes itself as "the leading provider of armed escorts in South East Asia for maritime assets," has its own armor-plated vessel that accompanies boats anywhere between Sri Lanka and the South China Sea for tens of thousands of dollars a mission.
The company employs former members of crack military units from Singapore and elsewhere who carry out their escort missions armed with M-16 and M-4 assault rifles.
There are up to six other armed escort companies already established, or in the process of setting themselves up, in Singapore, industry sources told reporters last month.
The armed escort industry is expanding amid growing concern over pirate attacks in the narrow, 960km strait.
PRECISION STRIKES: The most significant reason to deploy HIMARS to outlying islands is to establish a ‘dead zone’ that the PLA would not dare enter, a source said A High Mobility Artillery Rocket System (HIMARS) would be deployed to Penghu County and Dongyin Island (東引) in Lienchiang County (Matsu) to force the Chinese military to retreat at least 100km from the coastline, a military source said yesterday. Taiwan has been procuring HIMARS and Army Tactical Missile Systems (ATACMS) from the US in batches. Once all batches have been delivered, Taiwan would possess 111 HIMARS units and 504 ATACMS, which have a range of 300km. Considering that “offense is the best defense,” the military plans to forward-deploy the systems to outlying islands such as Penghu and Dongyin so that
WHAT WAS ALL THAT FOR? Jaw Shaw-kong said that Cheng Li-wen had pushed for more drastic cuts and attacked him, just for the outcome to be nearly identical to his bill The legislature yesterday passed a supplementary budget bill to fund the purchase of separate packages of US military equipment, with the combined amount of spending capped at NT$780 billion (US$24.8 billion). The Chinese Nationalist Party (KMT) and Taiwan People’s Party (TPP) used their legislative majority to pass the bill, which runs until 2033 and has two main funding provisions. One was for NT$300 billion of arms sales already approved by the US for Taiwan on Dec. 17 last year, the other was for NT$480 billion for another arms package expected to be announced by Washington. The bill, which fell short of the NT$1.25
‘CLEAR MESSAGE’: The bill would set up an interagency ‘tiger team’ to review sanctions tools and other economic options to help deter any Chinese aggression toward Taiwan US Representative Young Kim has introduced a bill to deter Chinese aggression against Taiwan, calling for an interagency “tiger team” to preplan coordinated sanctions and economic measures in response to possible Chinese military or political action against Taiwan. “[Chinese President] Xi Jinping [習近平] has directed the People’s Liberation Army to be ready to invade Taiwan by 2027. China has a plan. America should have one too,” Kim said in a news release on Thursday last week. She introduced the “Deter PRC [People’s Republic of China] aggression against Taiwan act” to “ensure the US has a coordinated sanctions strategy ready should
A former television news host and six military personnel — active and retired — have been indicted on espionage charges, Kaohsiung prosecutors said yesterday. Lin Chen-you (林宸佑), a former CTi News host and YouTuber, last year allegedly made videos at the direction of a Chinese agent criticizing the Democratic Progressive Party’s recall campaign, the Ciaotou District Prosecutors’ Office told a news conference in Kaohsiung. He allegedly received 4,325 tether coins for the videos from an unidentified person surnamed Huang (黃), believed to be an agent of a hostile foreign power, they said. Lin, also known as Ma Te (馬德), has a show named
RSS