ASEAN foreign ministers achieve much, but resolve little

ASEAN foreign ministers achieve much, but resolve little

Meidyatama Soeryodiningrat, The Jakarta Post, Vientiane

Southeast Asian foreign ministers completed a day of endless
meetings in Vientiane on Saturday, seemingly content in the
knowledge that they had achieved much while resolving little.

The agenda moved swiftly -- as swiftly as the ushers who
manually changed the giant backdrop of the meetings' different
designations in the main hall of the ICTC venue. Five meetings in
all; seven-and-a-half hours of "oblique speak" involving the 10
ASEAN foreign ministers, and, at different junctures, their
counterparts from China, Japan, South Korea and India.

The talks, a prelude to Monday's two-day annual Association of
Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit, cruised through the
mandatory agenda of discussing already agreed upon documents --
under the glitzy titles of "action plans" and "action programs".

These documents will comprise the piece de resistance of the
summit, action plans for the security community and social-
cultural communities: the Vientiane Action Program. With the
already-adopted action plan for the economic community, it will
establish targets for creating an ASEAN Community by 2020.

In official lingo, this means a closely "intertwined and
mutually reinforcing community" between Brunei, Cambodia,
Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore,
Thailand and Vietnam, aimed at shared peace and prosperity.

Once a taboo subject within the ASEAN straitjacket of
"nonintervention", member states have begun to qualify the
discussion of certain domestic issues that impact on regional
security. Issues such as the 1999 East Timor crisis, the 1997
political crisis in Cambodia, and the suppression of political
rights in Myanmar, have challenged ASEAN's usually detached
position on domestic issues.

It was newly democratic Indonesia that thrust such an agenda
on the table. Yet, it is Thailand, one of the initial proponents
of a review of the once-sacrosanct nonintervention principle,
that is now on the defensive against anyone daring to raise the
issue of the recent deaths in Southern Thailand during this
summit.

Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra threatened to walk out
of the meetings if the issue was raised within ASEAN. Thai
foreign ministry spokesman Sihasak Phuangketkeow, tactfully
maintained here on Saturday that Thailand was not opposed to
explaining the issue -- but stressed that "it is not a regional
issue, but a domestic one".

Another sensitive issue was the dissension to adopt what
amounts to another headline-grabbing ASEAN initiative.

On the heels of the two-day summit, ASEAN leaders will also
hold the catchy-phrased ASEAN Plus Three Summit, which
incorporates leaders from China, Japan and South Korea.

China and Malaysia seem the most eager to see the meeting
evolve into an East Asia Summit. If approved, it would begin next
year in Kuala Lumpur -- which, coincidentally, is also vying to
host the secretariat of this new initiative.

Most ASEAN countries agree that the Plus Three process should
evolve toward a larger East Asia Community. But a few members,
namely Indonesia, have been reluctant to hasten the process while
ASEAN itself is only now beginning to engage in its own
community-building program.

Indonesia warns that ASEAN could lose its role as the driving
force behind this initiative. Short of an outright rejection, the
foreign ministry's director for ASEAN affairs, Marty Natalegawa,
said Indonesia was "thinking aloud" on the need to carefully
study this proposal. He stressed the need to engage in a
comprehensive process, and not just simple add-ons.