AUKUS deal to seriously affect regional peace, stability, security: scholar

PHNOM PENH, Oct. 9 (Xinhua) -- The military pact among the United States, Britain and Australia, known as AUKUS, will seriously affect regional peace, stability and security, and it can trigger nuclear competition in the region, a Cambodian scholar has warned.

The deal, which will enable Australia to build nuclear-powered submarines with technology provided by the United States and Britain, is a tool for the United States to expand its military influence in the Asia-Pacific region, Chea Munyrith, president of the Cambodian Chinese Evolution Researcher Association, told Xinhua.

"The AUKUS will pose a risk of nuclear proliferation in the region," but the United States "does not care about other countries," said Munyrith.

The pact will also provide Australia with medium and long-range strike capacities such as Tomahawk cruise missiles, long-range anti-ship missiles and precision strike missiles, he said.

Such a move contradicts the Missile Technology Control Regime (MTCR), which was reached in 1987 to prohibit and control missile transportation with more than 300 km capability, he added.

As a signatory to the MTCR, the United States has "violated the pact by selling and transferring the Tomahawk cruise missiles, which can be launched for more than 1,000 km, to Australia," Munyrith said.

"AUKUS has disregarded and violated international law" and jeopardizes peace and stability in Asia, where countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) are located, he said.

ASEAN could not forget the tragedy that the United States has caused in Afghanistan, he said, adding between 1965 and 1973, the United States dropped roughly 2.7 million tons of explosives on 113,716 locations in Cambodia.