|
March 9:
Amid mounting tensions with Malaysia, the Financial Times reports that Indonesian officials are redoubling efforts to expand and modernize their country’s military. Ties between Jakarta and Kuala Lumpur have been strained in recent weeks, following Malaysia’s decision to award concessions in an oil-rich patch of sea off the northeastern coast of Borneo to the Royal Dutch Shell corporation – a move that prompted the Indonesian government to send warships into the disputed waters and incite a wave of anti-Malaysian protests.
But Indonesia, which has been under a U.S. arms embargo for 13 years, is dissatisfied with the current state of its military muscle, and officials in Jakarta are stepping up efforts to bolster their country’s armed forces. As part of this push, Indonesia’s Defense Minister, Juwono Sudarsono, is bound for Washington to lobby American officials for a restoration of full military ties. The visit comes just a month after the Bush administration reinstated a controversial program allowing Indonesian officers to train in the U.S., and relaxed restrictions on the sale of aircraft parts to Jakarta.
Less than a year after a $30 million Chinese loan and the launch of a $70 million Chinese-funded highway upgrade, Cambodia is once again turning to Beijing. The country’s co-Minister of Defense, Tea Banh, has told the Agence
France Presse that his government is “planning to buy more ships from the Chinese” as part of military efforts to “crackdown on pirates and smugglers.” Cambodia’s limited navy has engaged in occasional confrontations with Vietnam and Thailand over disputed coastal waters, but piracy and drug smuggling are emerging as cardinal concerns for the Southeast Asian state.
March 14:
North Korea has warned the United States and South Korea that bilateral military exercises planned by the two countries could lead to “an actual war” on the Korean Peninsula. According to the
Minju Joson, the North Korean cabinet’s official newspaper, “[t]he US and the South Korean authorities should immediately cancel their plan for the provocative joint military exercise against [North Korea].” “There is no guarantee that the large-scale joint military exercises will not go over to an actual war,” the Agence
France Presse reports the North Korean newspaper as warning. Officials in Seoul and Washington, meanwhile, maintain that the week-long military exercises – which are slated to begin on March 19th – are “purely defensive” and a routine element of the U.S.-South Korean military alliance.
March 15:
Pakistan is reviving a vibrant nuclear black market in South Asia. This is the conclusion of diplomats involved in the Nuclear Suppliers Group (NSG), which held its annual meeting in Vienna last week. Western officials involved with the NSG are charging that Pakistan has developed new proliferation channels since the exposure of the AQ Khan nuclear network in 2003, and is now seeking to clandestinely upgrade its nuclear program using new middlemen. “General procurement efforts (by Pakistan) are going on. It is a determined effort,” one diplomat tells the Reuters news agency.
China, the Philippines, and Vietnam have come together in what Philippine Foreign Affairs Secretary Alberto G. Romulo is calling a “watershed for regional diplomacy.” According to
Asia Pulse, the three nations have signed a tripartite agreement on the joint exploration of agreed areas in the South China Sea. Romulo believes that the joint activity between the Philippine National Oil Corporation, the China National Offshore Oil Company, and the Vietnam Oil and Gas Corporation “indicates the growing level of trust and confidence among claimants and their commitment to pursue peaceful options on the [South China Sea] issue.”
|
