By Prashanth Parameswaran
New navy chief calls for CUES to include other maritime agencies.
The international community should expand a key naval protocol amid ongoing South China Sea disputes, Malaysia’s new naval chief said in the opening keynote address to a regional security forum December 1.
According to IHS Jane’s, Admiral Kamarulzaman Ahmad Badaruddin, the chief of the Royal Malaysian Navy (RMN), called for an expansion of the Code for Unplanned Encounters at Sea (CUES) in his remarks delivered to this year’s Maritime Security and Coastal Surveillance Conference, which some have billed the region’s largest gathering of its kind this year. CUES is a series of protocols negotiated back in 2014 at the Western Pacific Naval Symposium for the safety of vessels meeting at sea.
Noting that the RMN shared concerns expressed by leaders about the possibility of further militarization of outposts in the South China Sea, the admiral, who was just confirmed to his new position last month, said CUES ought to be “thoroughly exercised in these areas” because they served an important role in “preventing miscalculations at sea.”
“In fact, CUES should also be expanded to other maritime agencies, especially the coastguards”, he added at the conference which was held at the Intercontinental Hotel in Kuala Lumpur.
Read the full story at The Diplomat