ASEAN sees strength in unity
ASEAN sees strength in unity
By Robert Birsel
BANGKOK (Reuter): Leaders of disparate southeast Asian
countries, divided by language, religion and culture, are pushing
ahead with an ambitious plan to integrate their booming economies
into one of the world's largest common markets.
Founded in 1967 as a pro-Western bloc in what was then a far-
from-stable backwater, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations
(ASEAN) today groups some of the world's most dynamic emerging
economies.
The seven-member group includes Indonesia, the world's most
populous Moslem country, the Philippines, Asia's only
predominantly Christian country, and Buddhist Thailand.
The tiny oil-rich sultanate of Brunei, fast-growing, multi-
ethnic Malaysia, and the prosperous island republic of Singapore
are also members.
Last July communist Vietnam, ASEAN's bogey man for its first
two decades of existence, became the seventh member.
ASEAN now has a combined population of some 420 million people
and if all goes to plan, in the next few years it will grow to
include Myanmar, Cambodia and Laos, and have a population of
close to 500 million.
"Wider and deeper" has become ASEAN's rallying cry as leaders
call for broader membership and deeper economic cooperation built
on the foundation of their ASEAN Free Trade Area (AFTA).
"Our common objectives are clear, all the ASEAN countries have
reaffirmed their determination to foster peace and prosperity for
the peoples of southeast Asia," Thai Prime Minister Banharn
Silpa-archa said in a closing address at the group's fifth summit
meeting in Bangkok in December.
"ASEAN has already expanded to cover Vietnam and agreed in
principle to expand to cover the other three by the year 2000,"
Somchai Phakaphasvivat, a respected economist and a professor at
Bangkok's Thammasat University, told Reuters.
"We're now going far beyond AFTA which covers trade. We're
moving towards the free flow of services and towards more
investment cooperation," he said.
"We're also expanding from economic cooperation towards
political cooperation as well as cooperation on social issues
such as human resources," Somchai added.
At the Bangkok summit the seven leaders agreed in principle to
accelerate the launching of the AFTA by slashing tariffs on a
broad range of products to zero percent by the year 2003.
But the December meeting also gave a brief glimpse of the
depth of potential divisions between the seven, in particular
between the larger members who still have large, politically-
sensitive agricultural sectors.
Indonesia stunned its colleagues by announcing it was refusing
to lower tariff walls on 15 key farm products, casting a pall
over the summit and illustrating the fundamentally competitive
nature of their economies.
The row was patched up, for the time being at least, with the
agreement in principle to cut tariffs on most items to zero
percent by the year 2003, but with "flexibility" allowed in the
implementation of the cuts.
ASEAN officials say there is likely to be some hard bargaining
when it comes to nailing down just how flexible they are going to
be in moving towards the removal of protection for sensitive farm
products including rice.
"It's the nature of the economies in this region, they're not
complementary," Chaiwat Khamchoo, chairman of international
relations at Bangkok's Chulalongkorn University, told Reuters.
"On the surface the leaders make a display of unity but in
practice they are very competitive with each other," he said.
"I didn't see much in concrete terms (emerge from the December
summit) except the display of cooperative spirit. Many things
were left open," he said.
But others see ASEAN's flexibility and willingness to
compromise to accommodate all as one of its core strengths.
"ASEAN is more flexible compared with the European Union and
ASEAN has achieved more than promised because of its
flexibility," Somchai said. "The dangers are lessened because we
have more flexibility."
The seven did agree to open up service industries and an
agreement on intellectual property cooperation, including the
setting up of an ASEAN patent and trademark office, should spur
the development of a high-technology sector in the region.
The leaders also endorsed a proposal by Singapore Prime
Minister Goh Chok Tong to introduce cooperation between the
group's central banks to withstand currency speculation through
repurchase arrangements.
As well as some progress towards greater economic cooperation,
the December summit saw the leaders of the seven ASEAN countries,
as well as those of the group's three prospective members,
signing a treaty turning the whole of southeast Asia into a
nuclear weapons-free zone.
ASEAN officials said the nuclear weapons ban, dreamed about
for decades, could finally be implemented because of the end of
the Cold War and, among other things, the withdrawal of U.S.
forces from bases in the Philippines.
But the end of the Cold War has given rise to new security
concerns which ASEAN is keen to address.
In July 1993 the group set up the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF)
which is officially billed as a multilateral consultative forum
aimed at promoting security in the Asia-Pacific region.
Among those who join ASEAN for the annual ARF meetings are
China, Russia, the United States, Japan, the European Union,
South Korea, Australia and Canada and New Zealand.
ASEAN officials are reluctant to single out China as the
region's looming security worry but two ASEAN members, the
Philippines and Vietnam, have potentially serious overlapping
territorial claims with China in the South China Sea.
"With the gradual withdrawal of the U.S. from the region we're
facing the challenge of a power vacuum," Somchai said.
"We're afraid either China or Japan will fill that vacuum.
ASEAN needs a multilateral approach, a united front in political
terms to face the vacuum," he said.