Cooperation elusive on SE Asia security

Cooperation elusive on SE Asia security

Dan Eaton, Reuters/Jakarta/Bangkok

Rivalry and vastly different levels of development in Southeast Asia are frustrating cooperation in combatting militants and a host of other security threats.

Some regional nations trust their neighbors less than they do outside powers, and are more comfortable cooperating with the United States, despite its wars in Iraq and Afghanistan.

Foreign ministers from the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) meeting in Jakarta next week will discuss an Indonesian initiative to form a security community, which includes a regional peacekeeping force, more cooperation on maritime threats and creating more open societies.

That meeting comes ahead of annual security talks on July 2 with ASEAN's 13 dialog partners, including the United States, Australia and the European Union.

But it is unlikely to see major progress, given the mistrust sewn by years of rivalry within ASEAN involving at least 13 overlapping maritime zones and dozens of land border disputes.

Singapore and its close ally the United States have recently voiced alarm at the risk of pirates linked to terror groups attacking tankers or other vessels in the Strait of Malacca dividing Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore.

They have called for tougher security and pledged to work to protect the strait, through which more than a quarter of world trade and half its oil passes.

And despite earlier vocal expressions of concern Washington might be seeking to have its marines patrol the vital sea lane, Malaysia, following a visit this week by U.S. pacific command chief Admiral Thomas Fargo, has now pledged to work with Washington through sharing intelligence and joint exercises.

Washington also plans to hold talks with other Asian nations on what it calls its "Regional Maritime Security Initiative", an as yet ill-defined plan to boost cooperation.

Indonesia, meanwhile, is left wondering about the fate of its intra-regional cooperation initiative, dubbed the "ASEAN Security Community".

"Our recent discussions on this issue prove to us that we need to have regional capacity in this area, because in the absence of regional thought on the subject we feel that other parties will bring a solution to us," said Indonesian foreign ministry spokesman Marty Natalegawa.

"This vacuum of ideas is not useful. We would be in a better state if we were to think of these things in a more deliberate manner, in a more rational manner," he said.

Indonesia's push for a regional peacekeeping capacity has also met with resistance from countries who fear such a development opens the door to ASEAN abandoning its traditional policy of non- interference in members' domestic affairs.

A draft plan of action to be approved by ministers at the Jakarta meeting next week contains a watered-down version of Indonesia's original proposal. It refers only to cooperation between various peacekeeping centers in member countries.

A draft joint communique makes no mention of it at all.

"The idea of a regional peace keeping force is probably premature at this stage," Thai foreign ministry spokesman Sihasak Phuanketkeow told Reuters.

"Maybe we should be thinking in terms of some kind of arrangement among ASEAN countries if this peace-keeping is necessary."

Another Southeast Asian official, who declined to be identified, said the peacekeeping proposal would probably be quietly dropped.

He said some ASEAN nations, which signed on to the broad concept of building a security community by 2020 at a meeting in Bali last year, also disagreed with other Indonesian proposals, including the promotion of human rights and democracy.

"Some of them have problems mentioning border disputes and some of them have problems dealing with specific references to a regional human rights mechanism," the official said.

"Some of them are also allergic to the concept of good governance because they say that good governance is a Western concept which is not applicable to ASEAN."

The nations of ASEAN are disparate and include military-run Myanmar, communist Vietnam and Laos, absolute monarchy Brunei, Thailand, the Philippines, Indonesia, Cambodia, Malaysia and wealthy Singapore.

Recent incidents in Southern Thailand, where more than 100 alleged separatist militants have been killed by security forces, and a fresh bout of sectarian violence in Indonesia's Moluccas islands, show the region's vulnerability to conflict.