Asia's top security grouping reaches critical juncture: analysts

Asia's top security grouping reaches critical juncture: analysts

Samantha Brown, Agence France-Presse, Bangkok

Asia's top security grouping, formed a decade ago with a mandate
to help maintain regional peace and stability, has reached a
crossroads, say analysts who are divided over assessing its
progress.

The ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) meets for the 10th time next
week in Phnom Penh, bringing together foreign ministers from the
Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and its security
dialog partners including the United States, China and the
European Union (EU).

A medley of trying international issues pepper the forum's
agenda this year, including terrorism, Iraq and North Korea's
nuclear ambitions and the recent democracy crackdown in Myanmar.

Hopes have already been dashed on one front. North Korea's
foreign minister Paek Nam-sun pulled out after current ARF chair
Cambodia issued a draft for the meet that included a discussion
of tensions on the Korean peninsula.

The abrupt cancellation illustrates the difficulties faced by
the ARF in bringing key issues to the table, analysts say.

"It's very bad. It's a big loss. The ARF is being used as a
tool by one country to manipulate other countries. Instead of
solving the problem, it is becoming part of the problem," said
Panitan Wattanayakorn, an academic from Chulalongkorn University.

"What else would you like to talk about in this region?
There's terrorism and North Korea... and they can't talk, let
alone talk about those issues."

Prapat Thepchatree, director of the Thammasat University's
Center for International Policy Studies, said the forum has moved
too slowly since its 1994 inception.

Back then its creators envisioned members working on
confidence-building measures before shifting toward preventive
diplomacy and then setting up a conflict resolution mechanism.

"Right now we are still struggling to move from stage one to
two. After almost 10 years of existence it's still gradually
moving, and most of the time is spent dealing with the so-called
confidence-building measures," he told AFP.

"It's at a standstill and in some sense it's going backwards."

Others however are more sanguine and argue that expectations
for the forum should not be too high.

"It's still consolidating. It will take another five years
maybe for ARF members to feel confident enough to discuss
issues," said Kavi Chongkittavorn, group editor of the English-
language Nation newspaper.

"They have spent 10 years building up comfort levels... They
have built up this rapport. In that sense, there's not much in
terms of concrete outcomes -- but I think it is still relevant,"
he said.

"It is relevant simply because it is the only regional
security forum for Asian countries with the participation of key
major powers."

ARF is widely recognized as the top such grouping in the
region, but it may face a competitor: the two-year old Asian
Security Conference.

The annual gathering, the brainchild of the London-based
International Institute for Strategic Studies, brings defense
rather than foreign ministers together. It last met in Singapore
in May.

"They are working more closely than in the ARF and have agreed
not to bring itself under the ARF umbrella," Chulalongkorn's
Panitan said.

"It could give the ARF a challenge in the longer term. Defense
ministers are more relaxed and they have more power on security
issues."

The academic added that he believed the ARF progressed
sufficiently in its first five years but its development has
since slowed to a critical point.

"It's at a very important juncture at which it could become an
effective institution. They have to make a strategic move to
focus on what is important to them and move way from confidence-
building measures to something much more meaningful. At the end
of its first decade, the ARF has a second chance."

ASEAN groups together Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos,
Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and
Vietnam.

Other ARF members are Australia, Canada, China, the European
Union, India, Japan, Mongolia, New Zealand, North Korea, South
Korea, Papua New Guinea, Russia and the United States.