Asia-Europe meet faces waning Western interest
Asia-Europe meet faces waning Western interest
Lee Kim Chew, The Straits Times, Asia News Network, Singapore
The European Union's waning interest in the eight-year-old
Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) is palpable. Judging by signals from a
preparatory meeting last week, it is now highly doubtful that all
EU leaders will attend the fifth ASEM summit to be held in Hanoi
on Oct. 8.
Strong participation from the Europeans would be a show of
political commitment to ASEM, but EU members are locked in a
contentious dispute with ASEAN over Myanmar's entry.
The EU is blocking Myanmar's participation unless the military
regime in Yangon frees Nobel peace laureate Aung San Suu Kyi from
house arrest and includes the opposition groups in drafting the
country's new Constitution.
But ASEAN insists on unconditional membership for Myanmar, the
same as it does for Cambodia and Laos. The EU, after all, is
inducting 10 new members into ASEM following its enlargement last
month.
There is broad agreement on both sides that Myanmar should not
be a hurdle to ASEM goals to foster closer ties between Asia and
Europe, but there is no easy way out of the impasse.
For ASEAN to agree to exclude Myanmar would mean the 10-member
grouping succumbing to a divide-and-rule policy that will
ultimately weaken it.
Nguyen Dang Quang, director-general and chief executive of the
secretariat in Hanoi preparing for the summit, said: "We are
trying to find an appropriate solution to the issue. The
aspiration is to admit 10 EU and three ASEAN members all at one
time without any conditions."
But there is no sign that the dispute will be resolved any
time soon. One EU diplomat told me there is "a real risk" that
the Hanoi summit may not take place. "Both sides have painted
themselves into their own corners," he said.
German Chancellor Gerhard Schroeder plans to attend the Hanoi
summit, said Felix Schmidt of Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, a German
political foundation in Vietnam.
So too French President Jacques Chirac.
British Prime Minister Tony Blair, however, is staying away,
apparently to show his displeasure with the Yangon regime,
according to European diplomats.
Britain joins Holland, Denmark and Sweden in strongly opposing
Myanmar's membership in ASEM.
These mixed attitudes in the EU show just how much oomph ASEM
has lost since its 1996 inaugural summit in Bangkok, when it got
off to a roaring start helped by the fact that Southeast Asia's
tiger economies were then on the upswing.
European interest however waned after the 1997 Asian financial
crisis and in the last seven years, ASEM's political and economic
impact has much diminished.
To compound the difficulties, the EU is now deeply preoccupied
with its own enlargement and ASEM has dropped further down in its
priorities.
Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong, who initiated the ASEM process
eight years ago, regretted in a recent speech that Europe's
relations with Asia had suffered from "benign neglect". "Europe's
fundamental priorities are internal, followed by relations with
America. So too are Asia's fundamental priorities internal and
trans-Pacific," he noted.
But this is not to say that ASEM is doomed. Stefan Hell of the
EU's European Studies programme in Hanoi is one person keeping
his fingers crossed: The coming ASEM summit will hopefully
"prevent the EU from becoming too preoccupied with its own
internal affairs", he said.
But there will be challenges: An enlarged informal forum with
39 members will be hard to manage, especially when it has no
secretariat with its own permanent staff.
The Vietnamese, who this year hold the chair, are working hard
to make sure the summit goes well. Among the projects they are
working on is a China-Germany initiative, to add a "social
pillar" in ASEM to bring together the EU and Asian labor
ministers and trade unions.
To renew European interest in ASEM, some EU members have also
proposed that it be turned into an international forum to counter
what they deem as the United States' unilateralism.
As Schmidt said: "There is great interest in Europe for a
multipolar world. ASEM could be seen as important contributor to
balance U.S. unilateralism."
It is unclear though if this will sit well with ASEAN members.
Even as he lamented declining European interest in Asia, PM Goh
said Singapore would not support any move to "gang up" against
the U.S.
"That would be foolish and self-defeating, the surest way to
marginalise ourselves," he warned. Instead, he proposed that
Europe and Asia forge a consensus and work closely with the U.S.
But given the sharp differences among ASEM members over U.S.
policies, that consensus is another long shot.
Whither ASEM? October will tell.