China, Russia and India aim to counter U.S. muscle

China, Russia and India aim to counter U.S. muscle

P. Parameswaran, Agence France-Presse, Phnom Penh

Nuclear powers Russia, China and India want to forge strategic
partnerships with Southeast Asia to counter growing U.S.
influence and assertiveness in the region, officials said on
Wednesday.

The three have given "strong signals" to the Association of
Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) that they would sign up to the
grouping's Treaty of Amity and Cooperation (TAC), effectively a
non-aggression pact among the 10 ASEAN member states.

The treaty was originally signed in 1976 by ASEAN's five
founding members -- Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines,
Singapore and Thailand.

Russia, China and India are the first to offer to sign up to
the pact to "demonstrate that we are benign powers and do not
desire your territory," an ASEAN diplomat said

"We believe the three will sign the agreement in Bali," during
the annual summit meeting of ASEAN leaders in October, the
diplomat told AFP.

"This is going to be very symbolic because it was in Bali that
the original regional concept of maintaining peace and security
evolved," he added.

Russia will this week also sign a joint declaration on a
"partnership of peace, security, stability and cooperation in the
Asia-Pacific region" with ASEAN.

The move by the three nuclear powers to forge such pacts comes
at a time when the United States is stamping its influence on the
region under the guise of the international fight against
terrorism, analysts said.

With nudging from Washington, ASEAN foreign ministers made an
unprecedented call on Tuesday for the early release of Myanmar's
opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi from detention by her
country's military rulers.

This is payback time for Southeast Asia, which is getting
enormous assistance from the United States in its uphill battle
against groups linked to Osama bin laden's al-Qaeda network
trying to establish a pan-Islamic state in the region, analysts
said.

But some ASEAN members themselves are worried about the high-
profile U.S. influence in the region, including Indonesia, which
has come under pressure from Washington for its strong-arm
approach in containing a revolt in its province of Aceh.

"If we put this renewed assertiveness in the context of
American dominance in the international arena and its ability to
impose its will through its unrivaled military capability, we can
understand the worries of some ASEAN nations that this could very
well turn out to be American dominance in this region too," said
Andrew Tan, an analyst with the Singapore-based Institute of
Defence and Strategic Studies.

"This worries Russia and China and India as well and it is not
surprising that they want to sign the TAC too. It could be
symbolic, but this is the way of communicating a political
message," Tan told AFP.

China has warned that any relocation of U.S. military
personnel to the region could complicate the North Korea nuclear
question.

"We think the North Korean nuclear issue is at a sensitive
period. Anything other countries do shouldn't intensify the
situation," China's foreign ministry spokeswoman Zhang Qiyue
said.

China, Russia and India, like the United States, are among
ASEAN's dialog partners.

In the past ASEAN had expected Japan, its biggest investor, to
balance the role of the United States and China, which has
overlapping claims with several Southeast Asian nations on a
group of islands in the South China Sea.

But ASEAN's confidence waned due to Tokyo's lack of
assertiveness in its foreign and defense policies and its
continuing reliance on the United States, analysts said.

ASEAN officials said the grouping could not ignore the
enormous economic potential of China and India as both markets
and trading partners.

"On the economic front particularly, we need to diversify our
risks as we cannot rely on the U.S. alone and we need establish
building blocks with all strategic players in the global scene,
particularly Asia," said Sundram Pushpanathan, ASEAN's head of
external relations.

ASEAN is already working on a free trade area with China,
while Indian Prime Minister Atal Behari Vajpayee has personally
agreed to undertake "concrete cooperation" for its own free trade
area linking the world's second most populous nation with
Southeast Asia.