Adding substance to ASEM dialogue

The Fifth Asia Europe Meeting (ASEM) in Hanoi has been significant for having taken place at all, given the dispute over the admission of Myanmar.

After all, the differences between the European Union and ASEAN over Yangon were wide enough for ministerial talks scheduled last June to be called off. When Myanmar joined ASEAN in 1997, the EU suspended the regular ASEAN-EU Ministerial Meeting (AEMM) in protest against the human rights record of the military junta in Myanmar and the absence of progress towards democracy.

In contrast, while the compromise solution confined Myanmar to representation by lower-ranking officials, 11 of the 26 EU members of ASEM sent their top leaders to the Hanoi summit, including French President Jacques Chirac and German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder. In the end, the importance of the ASEM process was too valuable to be scuttled or to be overshadowed by the impasse over Myanmar.

Nevertheless, the European determination to tighten the screws on the Yangon regime by imposing new sanctions is a reminder that the EU still does not share Asia's softly-softly approach which is based on engagement rather than the isolation of Myanmar.

Whatever the differences, the forces driving the members of ASEM closer together are even greater. Nowhere is this more compelling than in economics, where trade among the 25 EU countries and the 13 Asian nations in ASEM accounts for 43 percent of the global total and 46 percent of world gross domestic product. The political imperatives are just as great.

-- New Straits Times, Kuala Lumpur