Canberra, KL and much ado about ASEM

Canberra, KL and much ado about ASEM

Exclusion from ASEM will disadvantage Australian diplomacy in the Asia-Pacific, says Milton Osborne.

SINGAPORE: Malaysia's decision to exclude Australia from the next Asia-Europe summit (ASEM), due to be held in London in 1998, has evoked a range of reactions in Australia. While the Foreign Minister, Alexander Downer, has suggested the issue is not of great importance, other commentators have argued the matter is one for real concern.

Professor Stephen FitzGerald, the Director of the University of New South Wales' Asia-Australia Institute and a former Australian Ambassador to China, has spoken publicly of the Malaysian decision as a serious political act. A similar point of view has been expressed by Greg Sheridan, The Australian newspaper's respected foreign editor, who has written of the rebuff as being "part of a trend of Australia being excluded from new East Asian regional groupings".

The government's desire to minimize the significance of continuing exclusion from ASEM is understandable, not least in terms of Australia's recent failure to get elected to the United Nations Security Council despite widespread expectations that this goal would be achieved. After a period of difficulty in relations with China and the fall-out associated with Pauline Hanson's anti-Asian remarks, the last thing the Howard government wants to emphasize is a further difficulty on the diplomatic front.

This concern also explains the readiness with which government "sources have been eager to publicize the fact that Australia was not without friends at the Singapore ASEM meeting in February.

In particular, attention has been drawn to the role played by Japan during the summit, and to the fact that a further six of the Asian participants at the meeting were in favor of Australia's admission to the group.

Additionally, Australian officials insist, those countries that did not favor admitting Australia to ASEM at this stage, China and Brunei, in addition to Malaysia, were not speaking against Australia so much as against enlarging the number of non- European participants. But the fact remains that the key Asian vote against Australia's membership came from Malaysia and this raises a number of questions, not all of which can be easily answered.

First, is the question of whether Dr. Mahathir Mohamad's rejection of Australia's strongly expressed desire to join the ASEM process should be viewed in essentially personal terms? Is it credible to suggest that Dr. Mahathir's current policies are dictated by memories of past Australian ham-fistedness and thoughtless comment?

Could it be that the Malaysian Prime Minister still harbors resentment at the sudden withdrawal of an invitation to visit Australia in the early 1970s and former Prime Minister Keating's characterization of Dr. Mahathir as "recalcitrant in 1993? Without being privy to his innermost thoughts, it is nonetheless difficult to believe these concerns determined Dr. Mahathir's thinking.

After all, and following the meeting, brief though it was, between Prime Minister Howard and the Malaysian leader last year, it appeared there was a real improvement in relations between the two countries after what had been, without doubt, a period of distinct coolness. It is now clear that approval for Australia's participation in ASEM has not been part of that improvement.

A more convincing explanation for what has happened, and for Australia a more worrying one, is that Dr. Mahathir remains unconvinced of Australia's claim to be an integral part of the Asian region, even if it is not, by any reasonable set of criteria, an Asian nation itself.

The Hanson affair and allegations of racist behavior against Malaysian students in Australia are likely to have confirmed his judgment.

Australia's promotion of APEC, particularly by Paul Keating, was clearly seen as a challenge to Dr. Mahathir's concept of an East Asia Economic Caucus. More damaging for Australia, Keating openly expressed his doubts about ASEM's importance, a view, it should be said, his Foreign Minister, Gareth Evans, did not share.

More recently, the Howard government's commitment to enhancing ties with the United States, appears to have reinforced Malaysian doubts as to where Australia places its interests. While Malaysia's relations with Washington have improved in recent times, there remain doubts in Kuala Lumpur about the extent to which the U.S. is sufficiently alert to the interests of Asian nations, not least in relation to human rights issues.

In short, and quite apart from personality politics, there are enough basic policy differences between Australia and Malaysia to explain what happened in Singapore, so raising the most vital question of all. Is Malaysia likely to change its position in the future?

Prediction is always risky, but it is clear there will have to be a substantial change in Malaysian attitudes for Australia to be admitted to ASEM. For the moment, all that can be said with certainty is that the Howard government has a difficult task ahead of it and one which, if it does not succeed, will leave Australia seriously disadvantaged in the region it sees as vital to its future and within which ASEM seems set to be an increasingly important forum.

Dr. Milton Osborne is a freelance writer and consultant on Asian issues based in Sydney and a former senior Australia intelligence analyst.