Cambodia disrupts ASEAN vision

LONDON: The return of King Norodom Sihanouk to Cambodia from China on 29 August 1997 has done little to solve the country's latest political crisis. The putsch organised by Cambodia's Second Prime Minister, Hun Sen, head of the Cambodian People's Party (CPP) against his senior coalition government partner, First Prime Minister Prince Norodom Ranariddh, head of the royalist Funcinpec party on 6 July 1997, has brought renewed violence to the country and has undermined its regional and international rehabilitation.

The coup has interrupted the timetable for enlarging the Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN) to include all ten regional states Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. Moreover, it has posed a challenge to ASEAN's standing and regional role, which the Association has not been able to meet in a resolute manner.

The decision to expand membership from seven to ten states with the admission of Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar at the 30th annual meeting of ASEAN foreign ministers in Malaysia on 23 July 1997, had been confirmed on 31 May 1997.

The coup has presented ASEAN with a singular problem, beyond the embarrassment of an interrupted timetable. The Association extols the principle of non-interference in the domestic affairs of either member-states or other regional nations. This stance explains the Association's refusal to follow the West in applying pressure on Myanmar to revise its political system. Indeed, it had been Myanmar's prospective entry into the Association, and not Cambodia's, which had hitherto been the most controversial.

ASEAN's predicament arises from the diplomatic role it played in Cambodia following Vietnam's invasion of the country in December 1978. Although ASEAN had a marginal influence on the Agreements on a Comprehensive Political Settlement of the Cambodia Conflict concluded at a conference in Paris in October 1991 it had a strong stake in the terms of the accord.

Indonesia's Foreign Minister, Ali Alatas, was a co-chair of the Paris meeting, while six ASEAN states -- Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand -- participated in either the UN Advanced Mission in Cambodia and/or the UN Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC), which facilitated relatively free-and-fair elections in May 1993.

A fragile power-sharing arrangement, expressed in a coalition government, did not reflect the poll's true outcome. Nevertheless, it was endorsed by ASEAN as offering the best prospect for national reconciliation. Moreover, the settlement enabled ASEAN to admit Vietnam as its seventh member in July 1995.

The July 1997 coup challenged ASEAN's standing, because enlargement had been represented as a founding vision of the Association. In order to validate its regional role, ASEAN reacted by postponing Cambodia's entry into the Association. That decision was reaffirmed at the 23 July 1997 meeting in Kuala Lumpur which granted Laos and Myanmar full membership status.

During the Cambodian conflict, the Association challenged Vietnam's right to send its army across an internationally recognised national boundary and to replace an incumbent government with one of its own choosing. ASEAN's involvement in Cambodia's affairs was justified on that basis, although the underlying issue was Vietnam's challenge to the regional balance of power. Indeed, the Association was able to play a central diplomatic role in the war because of its Cold War alignment with China and the U.S.

The resolution of the conflict as an international problem was a consequence of the end of the Cold War. Strategic uncertainty prompted by concern about Washington's regional priorities and China's rising power led ASEAN to extend its model of multilateral security dialogue to the Asia-Pacific region. In July 1993, the Association established the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), which began its first working session in Bangkok on 25 July 1994.

The Association has assumed a central diplomatic position within the ARF, although this has been contested by Australia, Japan and South Korea. ASEAN provides the chair and secretariat for all ARF annual working sessions, and the co-chair for all inter-sessional meetings. Opposition to ASEAN's leading role in the Forum has resulted in the Association's member-states acting cohesively to protect a distinct diplomatic identity and its influence within the wider Asia-Pacific region.

Making ASEAN a larger and more diverse grouping, however, increases the problems of consensus-building and collective decision-making. Difficulties are likely to arise over economic convergence and, perhaps most seriously, in dealing with China's maritime assertiveness. There are opposing views about the latter issue, especially among the Association's newest members.

The problem of consensus was exposed when, at an emergency meeting of foreign ministers on 10 July 1997, Malaysia and Vietnam resisted suspending Cambodia's entry into ASEAN. After a lengthy debate, a decision to postpone Cambodia's membership was taken, but without challenging Phnom Penh's existing Observer status.

ASEAN also agreed to mediate through three of its foreign ministers -- Ali Alatas (Indonesia), Domingo Siazon (Philippines) and Prachuab Chayasan (Thailand). In a characteristic display of extreme vehemence, however, the officials were initially rebuffed by Hun Sen.

This was not the first time that the Association had attempted to intercede to address a regional problem. The Chair of its Standing Committee, Malaysia's Foreign Minister Abdullah Badawi, visited Yangon in June 1997 in a fruitless attempt to persuade the military junta to hold talks with opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi. Diplomatic intervention in Cambodia was more dramatic and qualitatively different: ASEAN refused to recognise the new regime and implied that some form of restoration of the political status quo had to take place before entry would be considered.

The Association's sentiments were registered on 24 July 1997 by Singapore's Foreign Minister, Professor Shanmugam Jayakumar: "Where force is used for an unconstitutional purpose, it is behaviour that ASEAN cannot ignore or condone." The announcement, however, was hardly consistent with a declared principle of non- interference in domestic matters.

Respect for constitutionalism in Cambodia was linked to ASEAN's standing because of the Association's stake in the Paris peace agreement and its outcome. And yet, ASEAN was also interested in ensuring political stability within Cambodia to prevent any competitive external intervention that could have an adverse effect on regional order. To that end, its foreign ministers expressed the hope that "the situation in the country would return to normalcy and that a solution could be found in the spirit of the Paris Peace Accords".

ASEAN secured ARF endorsement of its mediation role, which was indicative of a calculated Sino-U.S. agreement in advance of Chinese President Jiang Zemin's visit to Washington in October 1997. It also led to a more accommodating response from Hun Sen, qualified by an insistence that the Association should not interfere in Cambodia's domestic affairs.

ASEAN has indicated several conditions for Cambodia's political rehabilitation:

* respect for the Paris agreements;

* reinstalling the coalition government (without stipulating the reinstatement of Prince Ranariddh); and

* ending political repression and a commitment to free-and- fair elections in May 1998.

Hun Sen and his party colleagues went some way towards meeting these conditions by reconstituting a coalition government. Foreign Minister and Funcinpec member Ung Huot was elected First Prime Minister in place of Prince Ranariddh by more than two- thirds of the 120-member National Assembly on 6 August 1997, even though a number of Funcinpec officials had fled the country and others have reportedly been killed. The Assembly also removed Prince Ranariddh's parliamentary immunity so that he could be put on trial if he returned to Phnom Penh. However, Hun Sen issued an ultimatum on 19 August stipulating that Cambodia would not join ASEAN if it had to wait until after the 1998 elections to be admitted.

Now that a form of constitutionalism is being restored and a commitment to elections affirmed, ASEAN could justify reconsidering Cambodia's membership at an informal summit before the end of 1997. Despite King Sihanouk's refusal to endorse Ung Huot's appointment, Hun Sen's position has been strengthened by China's recognition of the regime and Washington's statement on 8 August that it would do business with the newly-appointed First Prime Minister even though the process of his selection was undemocratic and resume humanitarian aid supplies.

By intervening in Cambodia's domestic matters, and assuming a mandate that other ARF members had been only too willing to grant, ASEAN broke with principle, and put its cohesion, standing and regional role at risk. Ironically, had the Association's mediation effort been sufficiently successful to reconstitute the ousted coalition, political instability would almost certainly have returned to Cambodia, which would not have been in ASEAN's interest.

Hun Sen's obduracy and violent disposition have left the Association with little practical alternative but to approve a legitimising fagade for a ruthless dictatorial leadership in the interest of political order. The prospect of endorsing the easy option has been increased by the recent entry into ASEAN of Laos and Myanmar. Given the nature of the regimes in these two countries, it is likely that they would support Phnom Penh's early admission into the Association.

Within Cambodia, Hun Sen continues to consolidate his position. Funcinpec has launched only limited armed resistance at the country's margins, and no countervailing military challenge has been mounted by any factions of the fractured Khmer Rouge.

As a result of Hun Sen's political doggedness, an accommodation of his regime by the administrations in both Beijing and Washington, the resigned response of King Norodom Sihanouk, as well as divisions within ASEAN's ranks, the Association enjoys minimal influence. ASEAN was never intended to be a regional police force or to act in a trustee capacity for a failing state. In seeking to take a stand on Cambodia's constitutional sanctity, the Association of South-East Asian Nations has not only violated one of its working conventions but it has also exposed the limitations of its regional role.