ASEAN leaders, Chinese premier to unite against SARS at summit

ASEAN leaders, Chinese premier to unite against SARS at summit

Samantha Brown and P. Parameswaran Agence France-Presse Bangkok/Manila

In a rare emergency summit this week, ASEAN's 10 leaders plus China's Premier Wen Jiabao will seek to present a unified front to the world in their battle against the SARS crisis, while behind-the-scenes negotiations with China are likely to be more delicate, analysts say.

The summit is likely to produce a message of unity pitched primarily at investors, as fears of Severe Acute Respiratory Syndrome (SARS) soar with the relentless daily death tolls from worst-hit China and Hong Kong persisting, they say.

"They will enumerate the measures they have taken, while trying to sell the idea that the situation has stabilized," one Bangkok-based Western diplomat said.

"The basic idea they will present is: agreeing the epidemic has not been eradicated, but has been reduced, and saying, we have taken firm and effective measures to contain it, therefore it is not necessary to reduce investment."

SARS is wreaking havoc on ASEAN's economies, with growth forecasts being steadily lowered and tourism plummeting, leaving related industries, such as aviation, reeling.

Leaders from Southeast Asia will meet Wen in Bangkok on Tuesday to come to grips with the SARS, which has emerged as the biggest crisis in East Asia since the 1997-1998 financial turmoil.

But unlike the financial crisis which broke out in Southeast Asia and threatened to engulf the giant China, the SARS epidemic erupted in China in November and has hit nearly all the Southeast Asian economies.

The respiratory illness has now killed nearly 300 people, the bulk of them in China and its special administrative region Hong Kong, and threatens to retard economic growth in East Asia even as the region tries to find its feet from the financial debacle at the tail end of the last century.

"The ASEAN-China summit is crucial because to devise effective measures to combat SARS, we have to first understand the problem at the source," Sundram Pushpanathan, ASEAN's head of external relations, told AFP.

The 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) has hosted an annual dialog process with China since 1996 and grappled with various crises, including the East Asian financial turmoil and the thorny Spratly islands territorial dispute.

"We have already built a conducive setting for us to discuss problems openly among ourselves and it will be the same for SARS," Pushpanathan said.

"The important message that we hope will come from Tuesday's meeting among the ASEAN leaders and the meeting between the ASEAN leaders and the Chinese premier is that we are serious in wanting to rid this problem and regaining the trust of the investors and travelers."

Citing coordination and joint efforts by ASEAN and China that helped end the regional financial turmoil, Pushpanathan said East Asia could also contain the SARS problem through "coordinated and concerted actions".

During the financial crisis, when Southeast Asian currencies were falling rapidly, China bit the bullet and avoided devaluation of its yuan currency to prevent the turmoil from worsening.

China also spearheaded an East Asian move to set up a network of bilateral currency swap arrangements to ward off speculators who were blamed for the financial turmoil.

ASEAN officials said the group's leaders and Wen could agree on preventive steps and sharing of information to deal with the SARS problems.

This is the first meeting between Wen, who officially took office in March, and the leaders of ASEAN members Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.

The Bangkok summit is also unprecedented because it is the quickest to be convened by the ASEAN leaders in a crisis situation.

"In about a month since the SARS crisis erupted in the region, the ASEAN leaders are going to meet. So, if you look at the timing, this is even quicker than events like the Bali bombing and the financial crisis," Pushpanathan noted.

"This has now emerged a regional issue requiring a regional solution and immediate attention," he said.

But China's failure to alert the world to the emergence of the new virus in southern Guangdong province last November has evinced widespread criticism, but ASEAN and China have realized they must join forces if they have any chance of containing the disease, analysts say.

At a meeting of East Asian health ministers in Malaysia's Kuala Lumpur on Saturday ahead of the leaders' summit, China's deputy health minister Huang Jiefu was asked about the value of meeting with his ASEAN counterparts.

"I think solidarity and also (being) united and together as a team to fight the epidemic," he said.

At the meeting, the ASEAN plus China, Japan and South Korea vowed to enforce strict screening measures at all airports and other exit points to prevent suspected SARS cases from leaving, in a strong indication of cooperation.

How ASEAN deals with China behind the scenes, however, is less certain, with the powerful country's presence possibly complicating overall negotiations, the diplomat said.

"In terms of making a display, the fact that China is already there is a sign of mobilization of the principal Asian countries, which can only be well perceived. But the concrete results are likely to be reduced. It is a delicate exercise," the diplomat said.

"Either they will not announce anything with regard to China or they will announce further measurements, but that is not probable," he said, noting Singapore and Thailand's reliance on China as a trade partner.