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New spying techniques for a new threat

The chief of US military forces in the Pacific drew flak from Indonesia and Malaysia recently when he said that commandoes or marines on high-speed vessels might be used to intercept a ship in Southeast Asian waters if it was hijacked by terrorists.

In his comments to a congressional panel in Washington, Admiral Thomas Fargo, the head of the US Pacific Command in Hawaii, indicated that an area of particular concern was the Malacca and Singapore straits, a key passageway between the Pacific and Indian oceans, via the South China Sea, for both military and commercial shipping.

He was careful to note that sending US troops to board a vessel taken by terrorists was no more than a contingency plan. But just the possibility raises sensitive issues of national sovereignty, especially for Indonesia and Malaysia, whose territory flanks most of the 965km waterway.

China evidently shares those concerns. Xinhua on Monday quoted the Indonesian navy chief, Admiral Bernard Kent Sondakh, as saying that the states bordering the straits were responsible for its security and that Indonesian warships were capable of doing so. He added that his navy was ready to contain any US intrusion into its territory.

About one-quarter of the world's trade and half its oil pass through the Malacca and Singapore straits. Their strategic importance will only increase as Northeast Asian demand, especially from China, for imported oil from the Persian Gulf rises. The US Pacific Command regularly sends warships to the Gulf region via the straits. And the frequency of pirate attacks in the straits has heightened US concerns about possible terrorist strikes.

By focusing on Admiral Fargo's musings, reporters failed to see the bigger picture. In his testimony, he outlined a plan by the Bush administration to develop a maritime surveillance arrangement, known as the Regional Maritime Security Initiative. It is designed to curb both security and criminal threats, including piracy, trafficking, and the use of ships and cargo containers for terrorist purposes, or to spread weapons of mass destruction.

'Fundamentally, we need to gain an awareness of the maritime domain to match the picture we have of our international airspace,' Admiral Fargo said. 'We have found this concept well received by our friends and allies in the region.'

Satellite-based communications and intensified security checks since the September 11 attacks mean that the relevant authorities know the exact position of nearly all planes in the sky, where they are going, when they will arrive, who is on board and what cargo is being carried. The same cannot be said for the more than 46,000 ships engaged in international trade that roam the world's oceans.

But this is about to change and it could form the basis of real-time global surveillance of ships at sea. The International Maritime Organisation, the United Nations agency responsible for shipping safety, has made it mandatory for all ocean-going vessels of 300 gross tonnes or more to be equipped - by the end of this year - with an automatic identification system. It sends and receives information such as a ship's identity, position, course, speed and cargo to and from other ships, suitably equipped aircraft and the shore.

The system can help ships avoid collisions, make navigation safer and improve traffic management. But it can also make shipping more secure. The technology has already been proved by the Inmarsat company that provides satellite communication services to ships, airlines and air traffic controllers around the world. All that is needed is an International Maritime Organisation decision to apply it to the world's oceans.

Michael Richardson, a former Asia editor of the International Herald Tribune, is a visiting senior research fellow at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies in Singapore. The views expressed in this article are those of the author

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