Jakarta gives cold response to East Asian summit plan

The Jakarta Post, Jakarta

While Indonesia continues to have reservations about holding an East Asian summit next year, the secretary-general of the 10- member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), Ong Keng Yeong, said on Monday the summit would go ahead as planned.

In an interview with The Jakarta Post, Ong said the summit would be politically symbolic because of the presence of the 10 leaders of the ASEAN countries and their dialog partners from Japan, China and South Korea.

"At the appropriate time, we should hold a high-level meeting of the three plus the 10 under ASEAN. It will be a very big, symbolic political event," said Ong, who last week said the summit would be held sometime next year.

In December last year, Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi raised the idea of creating an Europe Union-style East Asian Community during a commemorative summit with ASEAN leaders in Tokyo, just three months after the ASEAN leaders agreed to the creation of the single market ASEAN Community by 2020. ASEAN leaders cautiously welcomed Koizumi's proposal at the time.

However, there are fears among the ASEAN members that they would be sidelined in the process, or that they would be caught up in the rivalry between China and Japan. South Korea, Japan and China annually attend the ASEAN summit (ASEAN+3). Last year India also joined as a new dialog partner.

"We are now persuading each other that this is a good idea," Ong said.

The spokesman for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Marty Natalegawa, said there should be more study of how a summit with East Asian countries could bring long-term benefits to ASEAN countries.

He also said Southeast Asian countries should work to increase cooperation within the ASEAN+3.

"We have to explore what an East Asian summit can achieve, what kind of added value an East Asian summit can provide us. We need to take advantage of the process that we have, to think of the East Asian summit (as) part of ASEAN+3," Marty said.

Ong said one Southeast Asian country and China had offered to host the summit.

Taking a different stance from Indonesia, Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi urged last Monday early action on the launch of the East Asian Community to meet the challenges and opportunities of an expanded European Union and the free trade area of the U.S.

Abdullah said during the second East Asia Congress in Kuala Lumpur that it could take at least two generations for Southeast Asian countries to reach the European benchmark.

According to Agence France-Presse, he further suggested that a future ASEAN+3 meeting could issue a "Concord of East Asia" as a symbolic laying down of a major milestone toward the ultimate goal. He also proposed the creation of an Asian or East Asian Monetary Fund, which would supplement but not supplant the International Monetary Fund.