N.Z. helps track Soviet activities

Press, 13 April 1984, Page 6

N.Z. helps track Soviet activities

NZPA-Reuter Singapore A joint military intelligence unit from Australia and New Zealand monitors Soviet naval activites in the Singapore area, said diplomatic sources yesterday.

They said the unit, known as A.N.Z.M.1.5., worked with the full knowledge of the Governments of Singapore and neighbouring Malaysia. A.N.Z.M.1.5., headed by two senior Australian and New Zealand army officers, was closely linked to British and United States Intelligence, the sources said. An Australian High Commission spokesman, Mr Don Hook, declined to comment, but the sources said that there were only a handful of intelligence officers in A.N.Z.M.I.S. The operation was a natural outgrowth of the 1971 Five-Power Defence Arrangement (F.PJM.) of Australia, New Zffiland, Britain, Malaysia,' and

Sinagpore, they said. The F.P.D.A. is not a military pact, but it allows members to consult in the event of an external threat to the security of Singapore or Malaysia. “There is nothing sensational about A.N.Z.M.I.S. Almost everyone is involved in monitoring Soviet naval activities in the region,” said a senior Western military official. New Zealand stations a battalion in Singapore under F.P.D.A. and Australia has an RA.A.F. squadron operating between Sinagpore and Malaysia. Singapore’s strategic location at the entrance to the Strait of Malacca makes it ,a vantage point for observing Soviet naval movements.

Soviet ships, including submarines, regularly pass through the strait, a vital link between the Indian and Pacific oceans.