Jakarta gears up for ASEAN guests

Jakarta gears up for ASEAN guests

Adianto P. Simamora, Jakarta

Indonesia, the current chair of the Association of the Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), will host a series of regional ministerial level meetings in Jakarta in the coming three weeks.

The first will be the 37th ASEAN Ministerial Meeting (AMM), on June 29 and 30.

The AMM, the first formal 10-member ASEAN foreign ministers' meeting since the Bali Summit in October 2003, will have on the agenda a plan of action for the ASEAN Security Community (ASC) concept and when it concludes the ministers hope to issue a joint communique. They also hope to issue a declaration on the elimination of violence against women in the ASEAN region.

Indonesia's foreign ministry spokesman Marty A. Natalegawa said that the ministerial meeting had a mandate to approve the plan of action for both the ASC and the ASEAN Socio-Cultural Community, which will be subsequently be endorsed at the next ASEAN Summit in November 2004 in Vientiane, Laos.

The ASEAN security community idea was initiated by Indonesia as a means of handling security matters and disputes through a regional framework rather than bilaterally or through international forums.

President Megawati Soekarnoputri is scheduled to open the meeting and will receive courtesy calls from ASEAN and other foreign ministers. The AMM will have a concluding speech by Indonesia's Minister of Foreign Affairs Hassan Wirayuda on June 30.

On July 1, the ASEAN foreign ministers will also hold ASEAN plus three (ASEAN+3) meeting with their counterparts from China, Japan, South Korea.

Simultaneously, there will be a number of Post-Ministerial Conferences (PMCs) on July 1, Marty said.

During the PMCs, the ASEAN foreign ministers will meet their counterparts from Australia, New Zealand, Canada, Russia, the European Union and the U.S.

After those two ministerial meetings, Jakarta will host the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) meeting, on July 2, 2004.

It is expected that the 23 ARF delegations will endorse the entry of Pakistan, the only predominantly Muslim country with nuclear weapons, as its 24th member.

Another topic that may come up during the deliberations between the 10 ASEAN delegations and those of the 13 other countries at the 11th ARF meeting will be terrorism, security in the Strait of Malacca and the North Korean nuclear issue.

North Korea's foreign minister confirmed that he would attend the meeting, while U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell may skip the meeting due to his preoccupation with his country's plan to hand over sovereignty to the Iraqi people on June 30.

"Yes, Minister Paek Nam-sun (of North Korea) will be here on June 28 and hold bilateral talks with Hassan Wirayuda," Marty told reporters on Friday.

Marty, however, declined to say whether Indonesia had made any plans to facilitate a meeting between North Korea and South Korea to discuss the nuclear issue.

"We are not in the position to facilitate the meeting, but if there is a demand from those countries, we are ready to facilitate it," he said.