Malaysia forbids US anti-terror air strikes

Malaysia will not permit the United States to conduct air strikes and covert attacks against any terrorists, government leaders have said.

“If you just launch air strikes, it is not going to help in the fight against terrorism,” foreign minister Syed Hamid Albar was quoted as saying by The Star newspaper today. “We will not agree for our territory to be used that way.”

Syed Hamid was commenting on a top US counter-terrorism official’s suggestion that covert attacks such as the CIA missile strike that killed a suspected al Qaida leader in Yemen last week could be used against terrorists in south east Asia.

Asked at a news conference in Manila, the Philippines capital, on Saturday whether such a strike could be made in south east Asia against suspected terrorists, US Ambassador at Large Francis Taylor, Washington’s co-ordinator for counter-terrorism, suggested it was an option.

A Predator drone aircraft near Marib, Yemen, fired a missile on November 5 at a car carrying Qaed Salim Sinan al-Harethi, al Qaida’s chief operative in Yemen and a suspect in a number of terrorist strikes. US officials have said they were working with Yemeni authorities.

Malaysian defence minister Najib Razak said US authorities “cannot use a Predator in this country without the government’s consent”.

“They are not invited here,” Najib told the Utusan Malaysia newspaper. “If such a thing happens, it will be considered a breach of this country’s sovereignty.”

Deputy prime minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi said Malaysia was “not a country that wants to allow another country to carry out operations in our country”.

“We know when to co-operate to fight terrorism ... but not to the extent of carrying out certain operations without our knowledge,” Abdullah told the national news agency, Bernama.

Since mid-2001, Malaysian authorities have arrested more than 70 suspected militants under a security law allowing indefinite detention without trial. Most are accused of belonging to Jemaah Islamiyah, the al Qaida-linked Islamic extremist group suspected of carrying out the October 12 bombings that killed nearly 200 people on Indonesia’s Bali island.