Singapore, May 31: Seventeen countries, including Singapore, launched on Saturday at the Shangri-La Dialogue a framework to protect critical underwater infrastructure.
The countries, which are from Europe, the Middle East, Oceania and Southeast Asia, launched the Guiding Principles for Underwater Infrastructure Defence Exchanges (GUIDE) that aims to bring together nations with common interests in the security of critical underwater infrastructure such as subsea telecommunications cables.
Countries need to work together to establish international norms to build, maintain and protect critical underwater infrastructure, and take to task those that mean harm to them, said Singapore's Defence Minister Chan Chun Sing.
He was speaking at the launch at the sidelines of the Shangri-La Dialogue, Asia's top defence summit that is held in Singapore.
The GUIDE is an agreement of shared principles and potential areas where defence establishments could collaborate to improve critical underwater infrastructure security, Singapore's Ministry of Defence (MINDEF) said in a news release.
It is voluntary, non-legally and non-financially binding, and does not create new legal obligations nor prejudice existing rights and obligations under international law.
Countries that endorsed the GUIDE framework were: Australia, Brunei, Estonia, Finland, France, Italy, Latvia, Lithuania, Malaysia, Netherlands, New Zealand, Philippines, Qatar, Singapore, Sweden, Thailand, and the United Kingdom.
"GUIDE is an example of how geography is not a barrier, and that countries can collaborate in flexible, issue-based groupings to shape the rules and norms in emerging domains," it added.
Chan said, "Today, the waterways are not just avenues for us to conduct our trade, but underneath those waters are also critical underwater infrastructure that connects our energy grid, our telecommunications grid."
He added, "We don't want a situation whereby such critical infrastructures are disrupted, and all of us get the negative knock-on effect ... any attack on one part of the network is an attack on the entire network.
"Any disruption on one part of the network is a disruption on the entire network, and that is why it gives us great joy to see so many countries - from Europe to the Middle East to Southeast Asia, Asia Pacific - coming together."
Source: Emirates News Agency