ASEAN checks recalcitrant Australia's treaty snub

ASEAN checks recalcitrant Australia's treaty snub

Sid Astbury, Deutsche France-Agentur/Sydney, Australia

Australian Prime Minister John Howard has set himself up for a big serving of humble pie by holding out for so long against signing the Association of Southeast Asian Nations' Treaty of Amity and Cooperation (TAC) and thereby securing a seat at the East Asian summit to be held in Malaysia at the end of the year.

The consensus in Canberra is that Howard will swallow hard and accept that ASEAN leaders are serious when they say that accession is a condition of attendance at a meeting it is organizing that will bring together the 10 Southeast Asian countries linked in ASEAN with dialog partners Japan, China, South Korea and possibly Australia, New Zealand and India.

The inaugural summit might become regional diplomacy's key annual event and exclusion would enforce a view that Australia was an outsider.

Howard has boxed himself into a corner on the treaty, a 1976 invention that commits signatories to settling their differences without recourse to force and which forbids interference in the affairs of another signatory. He has described the treaty as betokening a "mind set that we've all really moved on from" and "not the sort of treaty" that a non-ASEAN nation would want to sign.

Yet Japan has signed, as have South Korea and China. India has expressed willingness to sign, as has New Zealand. Australia, uncomfortably, is now the only potential invitee holding out against signing.

Even more uncomfortably, Howard has ridiculed the notion that Australia should, for the sake of attendance at the summit, please the neighbors and go along with the treaty.

Howard's recalcitrance reflects more than hubris. His approach to regional diplomacy has always been that Australia should not grovel for acceptance. Unlike the Labor Party's Paul Keating, whom he replaced as prime minister in 1996, Howard has been unwilling to accept that Canberra needs to adapt and take account of cultural differences if it wants to get on well with ASEAN countries.

A case in point: Howard's declaration that Australia would attack terrorist bases in the region if host governments wouldn't. A commitment to pre-emptive strikes, though it was clearly intended as a vote winner at home in the run up to the October election, was considered needlessly offensive to Australia's neighbors. It was taken as warning that, when it came to the region, respecting sovereignty was not an absolute principle.

The Labor Party's Kevin Rudd, opposition spokesman on foreign affairs, is predicting Howard will change tack.

"When he backs down and agrees to the treaty, it will demonstrate that his posturing on military pre-emption has been just that: posturing for domestic politics to look hairy-chested on terrorism," Rudd said.

The stakes are seen as too high for Howard not to negotiate a retreat from his hardline stance. Said Malcolm Cook, a researcher at Sydney's Lowy Institute think tank: "For Australia, getting invited to the East Asian summit is a particularly important policy outcome".

In fact, Howard is already backtracking. The 65-year-old leader said last week that sometimes it was necessary to put objections to one side to achieve a desired outcome.

In reference to his reluctance to sign the treaty, Howard said: "Sometimes you've got to put that in balance against the advantages of being involved in something that's valuable in the future".

So implacable has Howard been in opposing the treaty that ASEAN leaders are in no mood to help make a retreat gracious. Again, Howard has been responsible for his own discomfiture.

When he hosted Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi in Canberra earlier this month, Howard was still insisting that signing the treaty was out of the question.

This obduracy, some suggest, prompted the Malaysian leader to respond with some tough talking of his own. On a visit to China, Abdullah declared that accession to the treaty was "absolutely indispensable" for those angling for an invitation to the Kuala Lumpur summit in December.

Most observers expect Howard to change his tune on the treaty in coming weeks. But the tone of his remarks are not endearing him to ASEAN leaders. Asked if he would welcome an invitation to the summit, Howard replied: "It's a matter for ASEAN to decide. We'd be very happy to participate but we are not knocking on doors begging admission. We don't need to do that."