ASEAN set to steer more activist course

ASEAN set to steer more activist course

By Bill Tarrant

KUALA LUMPUR (Reuter): A newly enlarged Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) is preparing to steer a more activist course wielding economic and political clout, analysts and officials said at the weekend.

Winding up its 30th anniversary meeting last Friday, ASEAN decided to resume a mediation mission to help bring peace to troubled Cambodia and to take collective action to defend their currencies from assault by money traders.

Mahathir Mohamad, prime minister of ASEAN member Malaysia, launched a stinging attack on currency speculators and said outsiders should keep out of the region's business.

A government-run newspaper in Sri Lanka hailed him as a "Godsend" for the Third World and Asia in standing up to the West.

Myanmar and Laos last week joined ASEAN, which also includes Indonesia, Brunei, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.

Cambodia was supposed to have been admitted as well. But Cambodian strongman Hun Sen's overthrow of First Prime Minister Prince Norodom Ranariddh earlier this month plunged the country into turmoil, putting its entry on hold.

ASEAN, which has long been involved in diplomatic efforts to settle a two-decade civil war in Cambodia, said it would send a mediation mission to Phnom Penh once it gets "reconfirmation" that Hun Sen would really welcome the group's help.

And ASEAN's Western trade partners are urging the group to make good on its promise to prod new member Myanmar along the road to democracy.

"Myanmar's problems are now ASEAN's problems," U.S. Secretary of State Madeleine Albright said in a recent speech in Los Angeles.

Getting involved in the internal matters of members would have been unthinkable for ASEAN up until recently. A cornerstone policy of the group has been to avoid interference in each other's affairs.

But intellectuals and diplomats in the region say ASEAN is evolving in that direction of more intervention.

Deputy Malaysian Foreign Minister Anwar Ibrahim has said the time has come for ASEAN to consider "the idea of constructive interventions" and cited Myanmar as an example.

ASEAN has now nearly doubled its membership since the original five came together in 1967 at the height of the Vietnam War, when insurgencies, ethnic strife and ideological divisions were rife in the region.

All of the original five held deep suspicions about each other in a Cold War environment in which both the United States and the Soviet Union were trying to line up allies.

The 10 countries of Southeast Asia -- including Cambodia, which remains an observer in ASEAN -- have a combined population of nearly half a billion people and the group's combined gross domestic product of $600 billion ranks behind only Japan and China in Asia.

ASEAN is creating a free trade area over the next decade encompassing a geographic area bigger than the United States and more populous than Europe.

ASEAN's Secretary General Ajit Singh told reporters that the goal of cutting tariffs to between zero and five percent in inter-ASEAN trade would largely be realized by 2000, three years ahead of schedule.

The addition of new members and the rapid development of some of the world's fastest growing economies is undoubtedly giving ASEAN new heft in the diplomatic arena.

But whether the disparate group of governments wants to integrate in a more legally binding way, following the model of the European Union, is highly doubtful, analysts said.

ASEAN members rarely sign legally binding agreements. They never vote but discuss an issue until a position is found acceptable to all. Agreements are more likely to be worked out on a golf course than in a conference room.

"In most meetings, the strongest expression of minority reservations is often 'I go along with the consensus'," ASEAN's newly-elected Secretary-General Rodolfo Severino told a conference of academics and diplomats.

The enlargement of ASEAN to nine members would make consensus building more difficult, officials at the meetings said.

The induction of poor and much less developed countries such as Myanmar, Laos, Cambodia and Vietnam, also has the potential of creating a two-tier membership of rich and poor nations within the group, they said.

"Some commentators have expressed the fear that ASEAN's enlargement will widen the perceived division between mainland and maritime Southeast Asia," Severino said.

The freer flow of goods, services and capital throughout the region as the free trade area comes into being would have to be accompanied by a similar free flow of labor, analysts said.

That has proven to be a sensitive subject in a region where borders were flashpoints for insurgencies 30 years ago. Even today, Thailand has been a reluctant host to Myanmar and Cambodian refugees.

"The movement of labor has been managed much less forthrightly and skillfully and rationally than that of goods, services and capital," Severino said.

The growing scarcity of resources such as food, fuel and fish could create new problems in the future. Cross-border pollution, narcotics trafficking and sea piracy are other challenges confronting ASEAN in the future, diplomats and analysts said.