Word: malacca
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...spill occurred last week when the 237,698-ton supertanker Showa Maru ran aground at the eastern entrance to the Malacca Strait between Singapore and Malaysia on the north and Indonesia on the south. The impact tore open the ship's bottom, and an estimated 20,000 bbl. of oil leaked into the water. The five-square-mile slick that formed first threatened to smear the sparkling white beaches of Singapore's Sentosa Island, then began drifting westward toward more open water...
...Pentagon was quick to see a military threat in the developing countries' persistent claims to jurisdiction over 200 miles of coastal seas. If those claims succeeded, some 115 international straits-including Gibraltar, Dover, Malacca, the entrances to the Red Sea and the Persian Gulf-would be controlled by individual countries. That, in turn, would probably end the tradition of unimpeded transit of naval ships...
...sailing time. For U.S. military strategists, however, there is one drawback to clearing the canal. It will reduce from 11,000 miles (via the Cape of Good Hope) to only 2,200 miles the Soviet navy's supply lines from its Black Sea bases to the Straits of Malacca, the doorway to the Pacific and Japan...
...area, which now averages 30 ships; the U.S. presently has eight ships, including the aircraft carrier Kitty Hawk, there. The Russian presence is expected to increase even more with the reopening of the Suez Canal. Then the Soviet supply line, from its Black Sea bases to the Straits of Malacca, will shrink from 11,000 miles around the Cape of Good Hope to 2,200 miles through the canal...
Washington worries that an overwhelming Soviet presence in the Indian Ocean might raise an implicit threat to the Strait of Malacca, through which Japan gets its oil from the Middle East, as well as to Indonesia and even Australia. The U.S. until now has had only a brace of destroyers and the Valcour, an ex-seaplane tender stationed at the former British base in Bahrain. From now on, though, task forces from the Seventh Fleet will be periodically patrolling the strategic sea lanes and showing neutral nations something other than the Russian flag...