ASEAN officials debate ASC proposal in Yogyakarta

Slamet Susanto, Yogyakarta

Senior officials of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) discussed on Thursday the ASEAN Security Community (ASC) proposal at their meeting in Yogyakarta.

"We have yet to come to an agreement (on the ASC). We agreed to continue our discussions this weekend in Singapore," Director General for Asia-Pacific Affairs at the Indonesian Ministry of Foreign Affairs Makarim Wibisono told journalists after the closing of the ASEAN Senior Officials Meeting (SOM) on Thursday.

The discussion will continue at a similar gathering of ASEAN senior officials next month in Cambodia, Makarim said.

The outcome of these deliberations will be submitted to the forthcoming ASEAN Ministerial Meeting (AMM) in early July. The AMM will be held in Jakarta.

The ASC, which was proposed by the current ASEAN chairman Indonesia, was one of three "pillars" included in the Bali Concord II which was endorsed last October at the grouping's summit in Bali.

Together with the creation of similar economic and socio- cultural communities, the Bali Concord II lays the foundation for the creation of an ASEAN Community by 2020.

"These series of meetings are deliberately scheduled to crystallize ideas and opinions on the subject matter," Makarim said.

He described the discussion as encouraging but refused to say if there were any objections to Indonesia's proposal.

"The response was varied. Some delegates, for example, argued that the proposal could be viewed as interference in a country's internal affairs, which is not the norm in the regional grouping, Indonesian Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Marty A. Natalegawa said.

Jakarta's proposal also calls for the formation of an ASEAN peacekeeping force that might one day help settle disputes like those in Indonesia's Aceh province and the southern Philippines.

But Singapore has expressed reservations, arguing that ASEAN is not a security or defense organization. Vietnam is also reportedly cool toward the idea.

Marty said that the delegates also discussed six programs regarding the ASC during the meeting.

First was political development that deals with cooperation in the field of human rights, democratization and vulnerable groups.

Second was the sharing and shaping of norms, for example that ASEAN countries would not use violence in settling problems among themselves.

The rest included conflict prevention in the framework of ASEAN confidence building, conflict resolution, post-conflict peace building, and an ASEAN cooperation mechanism.

"We tried to explain that its time for us, ASEAN, to think regionally because what we want to deal with is not this year's challenge but that of 2020 instead", said Marty.