ASEAN is making virtue out of necessity

ASEAN is making virtue out of necessity

Dmitri Kosyrev, Political Analyst, RIA Novosti, Moscow

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) regional
security forum, which concluded recently in the Cambodian capital
Phnom Penh, could be called successful, especially as it will
have highly practical consequences.

Among other things, the Phnom Penh discussion of the Korean
nuclear problem resembled a kind of harmless diplomatic fight.

The Cambodian hosts were unable to organize a serious
multilateral meeting on the subject bringing together all the
interested parties, because Pyongyang is insisting on pursuing a
bilateral dialog with the U.S. and has rejected all other
options.
Knowing that no decisions on this score would be taken, all the
ministers attending the forum only reiterated their positions.

The most important of these, repeated at the start by U.S.
Secretary of State Colin Powell and then again by Assistant
Secretary of State James Kelly, was that the situation should be
resolved peacefully and diplomatically.

Moreover, both of them said that the U.S. was ready to wait
for as long as was necessary for diplomacy to bring about the
required results.

A vitally important point was that not one word was mentioned
in Phnom Penh about a sea blockade of North Korea. This is good
news against a background of no other news.

Few people know how the talks about human rights in Myanmar
(modern-day Burma) proceeded. Only the "western" participants in
the forum ventured any fierce criticism, while ASEAN ministers
significantly kept silent.

Foreign Minister of Myanmar Win Aung broke this silence and
expressed a very sobering thought: democracy is useful, but an
unsuccessful experiment with democracy in his country could lead
to its disintegration into individual feudal states, the leaders
of which would live off the production and sale of drugs.

It is, therefore, unclear what needs to be done. No one argued
with this point.

The participants obviously thought about the present state of
affairs in Afghanistan and even Iraq and understood that some
things are worse than authoritarian regimes.

The regional security forum, as is known, was set up by ASEAN
leaders to cover a relatively small area -- Southeast Asia --
with a political security structure. However, the forum
simultaneously became an umbrella structure for economic
integration in a far greater zone.

The forums in Hanoi, Brunei and now Cambodia have shown that
processes that were once seen in the now united Europe are now
happening in Asia, even though the latter is not too similar to
the former.

However, this process, as was the case in Europe, does not
mean a media field day. Seemingly incomprehensible (unless you
are a professional) documents are signed at conferences featuring
ministers of tourism and justice, the environment and police.

There are the talks on customs tariffs and rules to draw up
documentation. Then all this work is generalized on the eve of
the forums in even longer papers. The aim of all these disparate
"boring" documents, though, is leading to the creation of a
single economic space that has begun to be felt by all the
countries represented at the forum.

A single economic space in geographical terms is hard to
define. The only things that are clear are that different
partners are proceeding at different speeds, and that it will be
very big. It will come as no surprise that the formation of a
free trade zone between ASEAN and China will mean an overall
population of 1.7 billion people and an aggregate GDP of US$2
trillion.

However, what is news is that another Asian giant, India, will
obviously join this space, although in this case there is no talk
about a free trade zone so far. Evidently, the October meeting in
Phnom Penh will tell us more about how the ASEAN "ten" will
develop their relationship with India, after the signing of an
agreement on accelerating co-operation. This is a plan of action
with the force of inter-state obligations.

A similar plan was signed in Phnom Penh by another power which
until recently had been on the periphery of Asian cooperation,
i.e. Russia. The current document is a political one, which
stipulates, among other obligations, that trade-economic and
other forms of co-operations be accelerated. However, this is
only the tip of the iceberg. There will be an economic agreement,
an initiative in the tourism sphere, in particular easing visa
restrictions, and much more.

In general, economic integration in this part of the world is
not only happening with regard to ASEAN and China. The Phnom Penh
sensation, which has been somewhat overlooked so far, came in the
form of Colin Powell's comments about a possible free trade zone
between the U.S. and Southeast Asia.

There are other results of the forum that also need to be
evaluated correctly. At the final press conference, Cambodian
Foreign Minister Hor Namhong said that the main result had been
decisions taken in the sphere of drugs trafficking, AIDS and
SARS.

The "external" ASEAN partners paid serious attention to the
less prosperous countries in the region, i.e. Vietnam, Laos and
Cambodia. The forum also acts as a director of quite specific
processes linked with international programs. Mention was made at
the Phnom Penh press conference about a possible inter-state
agreement in a year in Jakarta.

The forum is about security and not economics and, largely
thanks to its activity, co-operation in the region is developing
successfully. The most diverse powers, who are even competing
with each other for influence in this region, are treading
carefully with regard to the future of the common economic space
where more and more money is being made with every passing year.

The forum's decisions in this region are not limited to
declarations. In particular, an agreement on the fight against
piracy and one on anti-terrorist co-operation to guarantee border
security were signed in Phnom Penh.

For an ordinary citizen crossing the borders of ASEAN
countries quickly and, more often than not, without a visa, the
results of these agreements should not be noticeable. But they
should be obvious for terrorists, as well as dirty money and the
circulation of dangerous goods.

Remember the vacillations that hit even stable unions during
the recent Iraqi crisis? In this context the past forum in Phnom
Penh looks even more encouraging, as it proved that the most
diverse countries, both major and minor, could find a common
language for the sake of the Asian-Pacific region's common
security and prosperity.