Jakarta gives cold response to East Asian summit plan

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.