Cambodia disrupts ASEAN vision

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.