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.