'ASEAN has to be in the driving seat'

Leaders of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) meet in Vientiane on Monday to adopt a roadmap for the establishment of an ASEAN Community consisting of three pillars -- an Economic Community, Security Community and Socio-Cultural Community. Before his departure to the Laotian capital, Foreign minister Hassan Wirayuda recently spoke to The Jakarta Post Meidyatama Suryadiningrat and Endy M. Bayuni about these preparations, and the future of East Asia integration.

How are preparations progressing in the drafting of action plans for the ASEAN Community? Out of the three pillars, the most difficult and sensitive in expanding into a plan of action is the Security Community because it relates to a wide spectrum of political and security issues. And yet we succeeded, during a meeting of ASEAN Foreign ministers here in June, to accept the proposal for the plan of action to be recommended to the leaders.

The plan of action for the Economic Community had already been drafted, so there was just the Socio-Cultural Community left. That was approved by the ASEAN foreign minister on the sidelines of the UN General Assembly meeting in New York recently.

In one year (since the ASEAN Summit in Bali 2003) we not only completed the drafting of the ASEAN Community concept, the Vientiane Action Program (VAP), but also the plans of action for the individual pillars, which include a list of activities that need to be done between now and 2020.

So everything for the implementation and establishment of the ASEAN Community for the next five years has been well planned. We did not only discuss things on the conceptual level, but on a more practical one. These documents are all very interesting for the diplomat and foreign policy addict, but what does it really do for the people in the region?

Yes I understand what you mean. I've always said that sometimes diplomacy is quite distant from matters that concern the stomach. However, at the end of the day, these things do affect the welfare of the people. There is of course a distance, a process that some do not appreciate, between diplomacy and the average person's quality of life.

People forget that the era of relative peace (in the region) that most of us have taken for granted over the past 37 years is a product of that process. The absence of war (between ASEAN countries) has allowed member states to build their economies. Compare this to other regions, which have not been blessed with a similar period of harmony.

Another example is how the ASEAN Free Trade Area has helped boost intra-ASEAN trade an average of 14 percent per year. this has directly helped the Indonesian economy. With all these new objectives, how do you envision ASEAN in the coming decade?

One of the most prominent will be the continuance of economic integration. Freedom of movement of goods, services and skilled labor will be much more open than it is now.

The challenge is that competition among members will increase. So the question will be how ready Indonesia is to face these challenges. We also know that apart from the ASEAN Summit, there will be a meeting between ASEAN leaders and their counterparts from China, Japan and South Korea (ASEAN+3). Is this a further de facto formalization of East Asia integration?

People can say what they want, but what we have here is a unique process in which three major powers are meeting at a gathering in which the ASEAN countries are in the driver's seat. This (ASEAN+3 Summit series) actually began in Kuala Lumpur in 1997. Some people are becoming impatient and questioning why this process of integration is still employing the ASEAN+3 vehicle. There is a push for it to develop more rapidly into an East Asia Summit.

Some are very impatient for this to happen. Of course, the 'Plus Three' nations want it to happen because they feel that the current process is too confined within the ASEAN context. They are already asking us why they are not being allowed the opportunity to host the ASEAN+3 Summit meeting.

And even within ASEAN, some believe that it is time to look at an 'East Asia Community' that can be expedited through an East Asia Summit. That question was actually posed during the ASEAN Ministerial Meeting earlier this year in Jakarta.

But there is also an opposite question that we should ask ourselves: Is ASEAN ready to engage in such an ambitious undertaking in a separate or parallel track (to the ones already in existence?

From an Indonesian perspective, we should ask ourselves whether the level of cohesiveness among ASEAN members has reached a level that allows us to engage in a new process with the three major powers without ASEAN itself losing its identity?

Keep in mind that ASEAN is just embarking on the process to build an ASEAN Community. Why don't we then just utilize the already established vehicle of ASEAN+3, which already comprises all the concerned parties?

Indonesia understands that East Asia integration is inevitable. And we are for closer interaction among all 13 countries. We are talking about a huge market of some two billion people, with a combined economy of US$11 trillion.

But we need to conduct sufficient studies before making any binding decisions on proceeding with an East Asia Summit as a separate track, while keeping in mind that ASEAN has to be in the driver's seat.