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