ASEAN endeavors for unity amid downturn, turmoil

ASEAN endeavors for unity amid downturn, turmoil

HANOI (Reuters): A gathering of Southeast Asian foreign
ministers aimed at rebuilding confidence and stability amid a new
regional downturn got off to a bad start on Sunday when
Indonesia's minister pulled out due to domestic turmoil.

It was the second blow to the week-long series of meetings due
to kick off on Monday, after North Korea said last week its
foreign minister would not attend, dashing hopes of a resumption
of high-level talks with the United States and South Korea.

An Indonesian official in Hanoi told Reuters Foreign Minister
Alwi Shihab canceled his trip due to upheaval in Jakarta, where
Indonesian President Abdurrahman Wahid faces imminent impeachment
for alleged corruption and incompetence.

"With the current situation, he decided he should be with the
president," the official said.

Ministers from the 10-nation Association of South East Asian
Nations (ASEAN) are to hold two days of meetings followed by
discussions with key regional players China, Japan and South
Korea, and then with dialogue partners in the 23-member ASEAN
Regional Forum, Asia's key security grouping.

The main challenge for ministers will be recovering some
credibility for ASEAN, which has been hobbled by disagreements
and declining economic clout and increasingly overshadowed by its
giant neighbor China.

This task will not be helped by events in Jakarta, where bomb
blasts in churches on Sunday underlined the potential for chaos
in ASEAN's largest and most volatile member that could
destabilize the entire region.

The gap

Top of the formal ASEAN program is a resolution pledging to
narrow the gap between richer members and poor nations like
communist Vietnam and Laos, Cambodia and military-ruled Myanmar,
but Indonesia is likely dominate closed sessions.

In a weekend editorial, Thailand's Bangkok Post daily said the
title that host Vietnam had chosen for the meeting -- ASEAN:
United, Stable, Integrated and Outward-Looking -- read like a
checklist of everything the group was not.

"The theme chosen for this year's meeting of foreign ministers
could not be more appropriate as it draws attention to all the
qualities missing in ASEAN," the paper said.

"Cramped by economic downturns in major trading partners in
the United States and Japan, ASEAN must become more practical and
forget about impossible dreams."

Thai Foreign Minister Surakiart Sathirathai insisted the group
could prove that it could stand together and help poorer members.

"What we would like to achieve is to find a way that ASEAN can
prove to the world that we are capable of further integrating in
the economic field," he told reporters on arrival in Hanoi.

But even the richer nations face renewed economic malaise --
Singapore is in technical recession and most of the region is
facing sharply slower growth. Analysts question whether ASEAN is
in any position to help poorer members catch up.

Surakiart said the ASEAN Regional Forum meeting would discuss
"preventive diplomacy" to defuse regional conflicts.

But the list of divisions and disagreements is a long one.
China is in dispute with several ASEAN states over islands in the
South China Sea, and a Japanese history textbook has incensed
China and South Korea who say it distorts wartime atrocities.

U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, who arrives on Tuesday
for his first trip to the country since he served in the Vietnam
War, will be seeking to improve ties with China after a recent
spy-plane row and to defuse a potential argument with Japan over
incidents involving U.S. servicemen stationed there.