ASEAN turns on Myanmar amid Asian power plays

Tue, 13 Dec 2005, 00:00 WIB | Source: REUTERS

Jalil Hamid, Reuters/Kuala Lumpur

Southeast Asia's premier regional grouping turned on military-
ruled member state Myanmar on Monday with its clearest call yet
for the junta to free opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi from
house arrest.

The 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN),
dispensing with its usual hands-off approach to its most awkward
member, made the call in a statement from the grouping's current
chairman, Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi.

"We also called for the release of those placed under
detention," Abdullah said in a written statement after an annual
summit of ASEAN leaders, which included his Myanmar counterpart.

ASEAN has rapidly lost patience this year with a lack of
progress in Myanmar's "roadmap to democracy", describing the
issue as an embarrassment and a distraction. Myanmar is shunned
by the West and is seen by Washington as an "outpost of tyranny".

The grouping pressured the junta at the weekend into accepting
an ASEAN envoy to pay a planned visit to Suu Kyi, an
extraordinary move by ASEAN's own gentle standards of diplomacy.
She has been under house arrest since 2003.

ASEAN wants to clear a way through the Myanmar issue so it can
focus on strengthening economic and political ties with the rest
of the region -- a task it wants to kick off on Wednesday with
the first East Asian summit in the Malaysian capital.

"It must not be simple language," Malaysian Foreign Minister
Syed Hamid Albar told reporters, explaining that ASEAN had to see
real progress on democracy in Myanmar. "There must be something
that we can see and that we can feel."

Only hours earlier, the grouping had agreed to draft its first
charter which could enshrine human rights and democracy. It also
heard calls from a tandem summit of non-government bodies for a
Southeast Asian human rights commission to be set up.

While Myanmar met a cold reception inside ASEAN, the focus was
also on external relationships with their powerful neighbors to
the north -- China, Japan and South Korea -- themselves at odds
over Japan's treatment of its wartime past.

The so-called ASEAN+3 will be joined for the first time by
India, Australia and New Zealand at the East Asia summit.

Japanese Foreign Minister Taro Aso set the tone for that
meeting last week when he said Tokyo welcomed the newcomers
because they would lead to an open East Asia community that
respected universal values such as democracy -- a clear swipe at
Beijing.

The birth of an East Asia summit, to be held annually in
tandem with the ASEAN summit, has fueled talk that it could
eventually lead to a pan-Asian free-trade area spanning about
half the world's population and a fifth of global trade.

ASEAN made clear on Monday that it did not want the newcomers
to share the driving seat on the journey toward an East Asian
community.

"We reiterated our commitment to ensuring that the ASEAN+3
process would be the main vehicle for the realization of the East
Asian community in the future," Abdullah said in his statement.

Japan and India are viewed as being keen to dilute China's
influence over the new community, but China is seen as wary of a
wider grouping that would include two strong U.S. allies, Japan
and Australia, and an emerging economic rival in India.

The United States was not invited to the Wednesday meeting.
Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao reassured his neighbors on Monday that
China's rapid economic rise was an opportunity, not a threat, to
the rest of East Asia.