ASEAN lobbies for India and Myanmar in ARF
By Meidyatama Suryodiningrat
YOGYAKARTA (JP): Indonesia, on behalf of the seven states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) is lobbying for the admission of India and Myanmar to the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), while leaving other applications pending.
The head of the ASEAN senior officials meeting, Izhar Ibrahim, said yesterday that he had met a number of non-ASEAN members of the ARF to seek out their views on India and Myanmar's membership.
"In this case, the chairman is conducting consultations with ARF members," said Izhar who is the Indonesian Foreign Ministry's director general of political affairs.
Izhar had just concluded chairing a three-day meeting of ASEAN senior officials. The meeting will be followed-up today with a two-day ARF senior officials meeting.
ASEAN is a regional forum comprising Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.
In order to promote regional security, the association established the ARF three-years ago as a multilateral consultative forum. Non-ASEAN members of the forum are Australia, Cambodia, Canada, China, the European Union, Japan, Laos, New Zealand, Papua New Guinea, Russia, South Korea and the United States.
The third ARF meeting will be held in Jakarta in July.
As the ARF has grown increasingly prestigious a number of countries such as India, Myanmar, Britain and France have applied for membership.
Given the growing number of applicants, officials are currently working on a criteria for new membership.
Izhar yesterday rejected suggestions that India and Myanmar were being given special treatment while other applicants had to wait for the drafting of membership criteria.
"That's not special treatment. In the past the criteria was to include those countries who were associated with ASEAN," he said, referring to the organization's dialog partners, consultative partners and observers.
India was approved in December as a full-dialog partner while Myanmar is a prospective member of ASEAN.
According to Izhar, there is a good chance that other ARF members will agree to include these two countries.
"There are indications that a consensus will likely be achieved. But I can't say that it is definite yet," he said.
Separately, several ASEAN delegates also expressed confidence that most ARF members would probably give "positive responses" to India and Myanmar.
They added that the criteria being drafted for future admission would be supported during the ARF meeting.
Delegates would not reveal the criteria but hinted that it should not depend on regional proximity but focus on letting in those countries who have a direct influence on regional security.
Izhar only said that it would be important to maintain the ARF membership to a "manageable size".
On the logistical preparations for the ARF meeting in July, delegates revealed that the issue of the European Commissioner's attendance was discussed in the just-concluded meeting.
It was proposed that the European Union, which has two seats at the ARF, should be given both seats in the front of the meeting only if the European Commissioner himself attended.