ASEAN called on to widen zone of peace community

JAKARTA (JP): Indonesia and its Southeast Asian neighbors, having successfully forged a zone of peace in the region, should now expand that community of peace to encompass the whole of East Asia, scholars in international affairs said yesterday.

The experts, from Indonesia, Malaysia and the Philippines, said in a seminar that the concepts of "national resilience" and "regional resilience" that have been developed by the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), could be used as the basis on which to build a new community of East Asians.

Dato' Noordin Sopiee of Malaysia said that to realize the idea, each of the seven members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations should in the first place improve each member's national resilience and nurture the association's unity.

Founded in 1967, ASEAN groups Thailand, Vietnam, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia, Brunei and the Philippines.

Sopiee, the director general of Malaysia's Institute of Strategic and International Studies, said ASEAN should strive to embrace the three other Southeast Asian countries: Myanmar, Cambodia and Laos.

"We must do it and do it right," he said in the seminar entitled Indonesia and the World at the Beginning of the 21st Century jointly organized by the Centre for Strategic and International Studies and The Jakarta Post.

Sopiee discussed the challenges of regional community building together with political analysts A. Hasnan Habib and Jusuf Wanandi of Indonesia, and Carolina G. Hernandez of the Philippines in a session led by Sabam Siagian, a former Indonesian ambassador to Australia.

The area of "community of peace" could be expanded to cover East Asia and eventually the whole Asia-Pacific, Sopiee said.

Sopiee proposed what he termed "ASEAN's five circle agenda for peace and defense": strengthen national resilience, fortify ASEAN's resilience, construct a Southeast Asian zone or community of peace, build an East Asian zone or community of peace and build an Asia-Pacific community of friends.

In the future, Indonesia will need to provide leadership in the building of the Southeast and East Asian communities of peace and Asia-Pacific community of friends, he said.

The speakers cautioned that China may prove to be a stumbling block in developing the Asia-Pacific zone of peace.

They pointed out that many countries have long believed that China, which has become one of the world's superpowers, poses a military threat in the region.

China is pitted in a territorial dispute over the potentially oil-rich Spratly Islands in the South China Sea with Taiwan, the Philippines, Brunei, Malaysia and Vietnam.

Carolina G. Hernandez, president of the Manila-based Institute for Strategic and Development Studies, said the countries involved in the South China Sea conflict should have more frequent political discussions to diffuse tension.

She praised China for refraining from using force, allowing peaceful talks on the disputes with its neighbors. "China is doing its best to live in peace with its neighbors," she said.

A. Hasnan Habib, a former ambassador to the U.S., warned that with an average annual growth of 10 percent, China continues building arms and is perceived as a potential threat by its neighbors.

"China is increasingly powerful...its potential threat cannot be ignored," said the retired army lieutenant general. He pointed out that China continues to carry out nuclear tests and has raised its military spending.

Jusuf Wanandi of the Centre for Strategic and International Studies pointed out that China, whose population increases by 14 million to 16 million a year, is not only a regional military giant but has become one of the world's superpowers.

In his keynote address earlier, State Minister of Environment Sarwono Kusumaatmadja highlighted the challenges that Indonesia faces in the 21st century.

Despite statistics indicating that Indonesia has economically progressed rapidly, the country's development gains are not yet evenly distributed among citizens or regions, Sarwono said.

Indonesia is yet to address discrepancies such as unequal economic opportunities, but it has also to solve problems like monopoly, he said.

The country is also to tackle the delicate issue of maintaining harmony between people of different religions and accommodate the growing demand for democracy, he added. (pan)