Kuala Lumpur - Malaysia, Indonesia and Japan scrambled on Tuesday to rescue four ship officers and a sailor kidnapped by pirates in audacious armed raids on a tanker and a tugboat in the Malacca Strait.
Malaysia deployed five patrol boats and a helicopter and Indonesia sent three warships into one of the world's busiest waterways in response to a sudden spike in attacks after Asia's December 26 tsunami put the strait's pirates temporarily out of action.
In Japan, Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi ordered government agencies to rescue two Japanese among the kidnap victims, but Chief Cabinet Secretary Hiroyuki Hosoda said Tokyo had yet to make contact with the pirates.
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"We are not seeing any progress at all. At this moment we have no new information. We have yet to find the hostage-takers as well as the victims," Hosoda, Japan's government spokesperson, told a news conference.
'We are not seeing any progress at all' Asked if the pirates want ransom, Hosoda said "there is no such thing" but added he could not reveal many details due to the sensitivity of the situation.
Japan's coast guard said it would consider dispatching patrol vessels and aircraft to the area if Malaysia asked for help.
But Malaysia's marine police force commander Abdul Rahman Ahmad said Malaysia would stand by its policy of not allowing foreign gunboats except those from Indonesia and Singapore to patrol the Malacca Strait.
The issue of security in the strait has become sensitive since Japan and Western governments expressed concern recently that terrorists could hijack a tanker to use as a floating bomb or to block the vital channel and disrupt world trade.
The strait, which slices peninsular Malaysia from Indonesia's Sumatra Island, is the quickest route from the Indian Ocean to the South China Sea and carries a third of world trade and half its oil supplies.
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