ASEAN meet disrupted by S. Korea, U.S.

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.