ASEAN gives green light to RI proposal

ASEAN gives green light to RI proposal

Fabiola Desy Unidjaja, The Jakarta Post, Phnom Penh

Indonesia has received a green light from the rest of the
Association of Southeast Asia Nations (ASEAN) member countries to
further discuss the security community concept, proposed during
the ministerial meeting here on Monday.

Indonesian Minister of Foreign Affairs Hassan Wirayuda said on
Monday that all ASEAN members welcomed the idea and suggested
more meetings be arranged to deliberate the concept.

"The member countries were receptive to the concept and
suggested more meetings and time to think this idea through,"
Hassan said after attending the ASEAN ministerial meeting (AMM)
here.

He said there was a degree of comfort among ASEAN members to
recognize that there were domestic security problems among them
that could harm security in the region.

"We have to admit that many times there have been an exchange
of words between ASEAN member countries over security issues that
makes ASEAN look ugly and we need a kind of mechanism to deal
with those problems among ourselves," he said.

Hassan said that Indonesia was aiming to finalize some of the
elements of the concept for the ASEAN leaders to agree upon in
the upcoming ASEAN Summit on Bali.

"The concept will be our main agenda during our chairmanship
of ASEAN next year," the minister added.

Several elements of the concept, such as the need to enhance
political and security cooperation, will be mentioned in the
Joint Communique of AMM, an official said.

Indonesia proposed the idea of an ASEAN security community
concept during the meeting here, before it assumes the ASEAN
presidency. The concept emulates a road map for the region to be
free of potential conflict by 2020.

Hassan underlined that the 36-year-old association should have
matured enough to discuss various security issues such as illicit
drug trafficking, small arms smuggling and other transnational
crimes that serve terrorism and separatism in several member
countries of the regional grouping.

Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore were involved in a heated
debate concerning terrorism, with the neighboring countries
repeatedly accusing Indonesia of harboring terrorist leaders,
such as Abu Bakar Ba'asyir. The minister said that the issue
reflected the degree of cohesion in ASEAN and said that the
security concept aimed at addressing these kinds of
"nontraditional" threats in the region.

He asserted that the concept was not meant to interfere with
each other's domestic affairs, nor suggested a defense pact for
the region. He underlined that the concept was even broader than
that.

"For example, with the concept we should have a conflict
resolution mechanism among ourselves, and maybe in turn we could
build a dispute settlement mechanism in the region," the minister
said.

To discuss the concept, the ASEAN ministers are slated to have
another meeting on Tuesday, before the closing of the 36th ASEAN
Ministerial Meeting.

A series of meetings will follow the talks on the security
concept in August and the final senior officials' meeting is
slated to be held in Mataram, West Nusa Tenggara, in September