Kuala Lumpur: Malaysia has sufficient assets to monitor the presence of Chinese coast guard vessels in the waters around the disputed Beting Patinggi Ali near Miri, Sarawak.
Defence minister Mohamad Hasan said such assets not only involve the navy but the potential deployment of air and ground forces.
Beting Patinggi Ali, which is also known as Luconia Shoals, is a resource-rich area which China and Malaysia have overlapping territorial claims.
“(Our assets) are more than enough. We’re monitoring the situation and have deployed our assets there to prevent a ‘doctrine of estoppel’,” said Mohamad after inspecting the construction site of the army’s One Member One House (Sasar) programme in Sungai Besi here today.
“This means that when there is no claimant, you place your assets in the area so that you can then claim it belongs to you.”
He said while it is important for Malaysia to place its military assets in “overlapping” areas to avoid other countries claiming ownership, he did not consider the presence of Chinese coast guard vessels in Beting Patinggi Ali to be an act of aggression as it was in an overlapping area.
He was responding to a report yesterday that the navy’s Kedah-class patrol vessel KD Kelantan was in the waters around Beting Patinggi Ali to monitor the presence of the Chinese ships.
It was previously reported that the China Coast Guard has had a vessel anchored in the area since 2013.
