ASEAN meet disrupted by S. Korea, U.S.
By Pandaya
BANGKOK (JP): The inaugural ASEAN Regional Forum meeting opened with a clash yesterday, when the U.S. and South Korea forced the conference to take a stand at the gripping Korean peninsula crisis.
The six ASEAN foreign minister and their counterparts from 12 states discussed security in the Asia-Pacific region behind closed doors for three hours.
Conference sources said the U.S. set the stage for confrontation with the ASEAN foreign ministers when they insisted that the officials take a stand on the Korean peninsula crisis, which has been already aggravated by the nuclear issue.
The U.S., represented by foreign undersecretary Strobe Talbott and Korea by Foreign Minister Han Sung-joo, maintained that the chairman's statements to be issued late last night made mention of the Korean issue.
But China and Indonesia turned down the proposal on the grounds that the three-hour gathering should not raise particular conflicts which may spark open confrontation, a senior official said.
Predictably, the officials did not discuss the potentially explosive conflict over the sprawling Spratly islands in the South China Sea claimed by China, Taiwan, the Philippines, Malaysia, Vietnam and Brunei.
"Once specific issues like the Spratlys were raised, the participants concerned would begin attacking each other," said Izhar Ibrahim, Indonesia's director general for political affairs.
The dialog followed the annual meeting of foreign ministers of ASEAN, which groups Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Indonesia, Brunei and the Philippines which ended on Saturday.
The ASEAN regional forum brings together Australia, New Zealand, the U.S., Canada, European Union, Japan, South Korea (as dialog partners), Russia, China (as consultative partners), Papua New Guinea, Vietnam, Laos (as observers), Cambodia and Myanmar (as guests).
The ASEAN Regional Forum will be held on annual basis. Officials said that in the future the forum will broaden the issues under discussion.
Tension
The gathering was marred with waves of demonstrations organized by non-governmental organizations demanding that ASEAN stop rights violations in the region, which they said were a major cause of tension.
Activists who participated in two unofficial human rights seminars handed over petitions to Thai foreign ministry officials at the posh Sangri-La hotel where the ASEAN Forum meeting was taking place.
They criticized human rights records in Indonesia and Myanmar.
Izhar said the meeting did not even touch on human rights issues. "It is not the right forum to discuss human rights issues," he said after the meeting.
Indonesian Foreign Minister Ali Alatas told journalists he was "satisfied" with the meeting because every participant could speak their mind and begin to build trust in each other.
Indonesia proposed that the U.S., Russia, China and Japan should be involved in the planning of the Zone of Peace, Freedom and Neutrality (ZOPFAN).
Indonesia sought to bind the four world's major powers and the rest of the dialog partners in ASEAN's Treaty of Amity and Cooperation.
Alatas argued that ZOPFAN, conceived as a broadly gauged framework for greater peace and security in Southeast Asia, was still relevant because it is based on premises eminently valid today.