As Captain Tharamadurai noses his patrol boat between the low-slung banks of mangrove forests towards the Malacca Strait, he has centuries-old problems on his mind: pirates and smugglers.

But for worried governments from Washington to Tokyo the Malaysian marine police officer represents the frontline of defence against a more modern menace: terrorists.

The Malacca Strait, a narrow waterway slicing Indonesia's sprawling Sumatra island from mainland Southeast Asia, is one of the busiest shipping lanes in the world, funnelling 50,000 vessels a year between the biggest economies of the West and the East.

A hunting ground for pirates from ancient times until today, it carries a third of global trade and more than 10 billion barrels per day of oil to Japan, South Korea, China and other Pacific Rim countries.

The US Energy Information Administration describes it as the "key choke point in Asia".

Video discovery

From the teak foredeck of his 110-foot PX-27 Tharamadurai watches the stately procession of oil supertankers, liquid petroleum gas carriers and hulking container ships navigating the link from the Indian Ocean to the South China Sea and the Pacific.

And he knows that Osama bin Laden's al-Qaeda terrorist network has been watching him.

Videos showing Malaysian boats on patrol in the strait were found in an al-Qaeda hideout in Afghanistan when the United States invaded after the Sept 11, 2001 attacks on New York and Washington.

The discovery sparked concern that the success in using hijacked airliners as weapons could inspire a similarly dramatic attack using an oil supertanker as a monstrous bomb, perhaps against the strategic port of Singapore, or a vessel such as an American warship.

The authorities in Singapore say they uncovered a plot to attack US military ships in the strait, along with other targets in the island state, when they arrested members of the al-Qaeda-linked Jemaah Islamiyahterrorist group late in 2001.

JI is accused of responsibility for the Bali bombing in neighbouring Indonesia in October last year which killed more than 200 people, mostly Western tourists, in the world's biggest terror attack since September 11.

"We always have this thing in the back of our mind," admits Tharamadurai, as the pea-green waters of the strait darken under the thunderclouds of a building tropical storm.

After the discovery of the al-Qaeda tapes, patrols were doubled. During the Iraq war particular attention was paid to Western oil installations and to the Malaysian-owned Star Cruises passenger liners heading out to sea.

"But things have been good on the strait," says Tharamadurai, a burly, cheerful 15-year veteran of Malaysia's marine police who holds the rank of assistant superintendent.

No to joint patrols

In an attempt to keep things that way, both the United States and Japan have reportedly offered assistance in patrolling the 800-kilometre waterway, which narrows to just 2.5 kilometres wide off Singapore.

Marine Police Commander Muhamad Muda, however, told AFP that while the exchange of intelligence and experience were always welcome, "we don't need foreign ships to come into Malaysian waters for joint patrols. I don't think our government would like that kind of thing."

Japan's interest is fundamental - 90 percent of its oil is shipped through the strait. "Japan has come to my office several times talking about the issue," Muda says.

He insists that Malaysia is capable of ensuring the security of shipping on its side of the strait, although officials acknowledge that Indonesian waters are not so well patrolled and remain a dangerous haunt of pirates.

Muda says he has had no direct approach from the United States on the issue of joint patrols, but the Asian Wall Street Journal reported last month that the United States was pressing for tighter security in the strait.

The paper quoted a yet-to-be published report by the East-West Center, a US government think-tank, as saying: "The nightmare for the United States is that a supertanker will be hijacked and driven into Singapore port, or some other large port, or sunk in the Malacca Strait thus seriously disrupting the flow of oil to East Asia, and potentially blocking US naval mobility and flexibility as well."

Soured ties

Prime Minister Dr Mahathir Mohamad was invited to the White House last year to be thanked personally by President George W Bush for his support in the war on terrorism, including the detention of some 70 Islamic militants, many of them alleged JI members.

But relations between the two countries have soured recently over Mahathir's strong criticism of the war on Iraq, and earlier this month Malaysia announced that it had dropped Washington as a full partner in a new regional anti-terrorism centre established here.

Despite his confidence that Malaysia can handle security alone, Muda acknowledges the threat from al-Qaeda, saying the discovery of the video tapes was "very interesting, it shows that they are watching us."

He says that if a tanker were hijacked, the marine police would call in a "Crisis Management Team" of specially trained sea- and air-borne anti-terrorism specialists.

Suicide attacks

Traffic in the strait also faces the threat of direct suicide attacks using small boats laden with explosives, such as those carried out against the USS Cole in Yemen in October 2000 and against the Limburg oil tanker off Yemen last year.

That type of attack could be launched from hundreds of hide-aways on the jungle-clad coasts, and Tharamadurai concedes that it could be almost impossible to prevent in waters full of small craft, from Indonesian cargo junks to fishing boats.

He has a swivel-mounted 20mm cannon in the bow of PX-27 and says he could "take them out if we knew what they were up to", but if a speedboat-bomb suddenly swerved into a tanker, "there's not much we could do".

With this concern always in the back of his mind, he goes about his daily task of intercepting and boarding beautiful but down-at-heel cargo junks, his sub-machine-gun-toting crew of 16 giving them a quick once over before sending them on their way.

The black smoke belching from their antiquated diesel engines drifts over the choppy waters, obscuring for a moment the modern symbols of wealth and power whose vulnerability as they sail line astern through the strait keeps the men in suits in New York and Tokyo awake at night. - AFP