KL presses for action on East Asian Community

KL presses for action on East Asian Community

M.Jegathesan, Agence France-Presse, Kuala Lumpur

Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi made a strong push on Monday for early action on launching an East Asian Community to face up to the threats and opportunities of an expanded Europe and the free trade area of the Americas.

Abdullah told the second East Asia Congress here the time had now come for the realization of an idea first proposed by his predecessor, Mahathir Mohamad, more than 13 years ago. The idea was dropped amid strong opposition from the United States.

"We in the region have dallied long enough. It is now time to take the process of building our East Asian Community to new heights and in new directions," he said in an opening address to some 800 government officials, businessmen and academics from around the region.

Abdullah warned that it would take "at least two generations for East Asia to reach the European benchmark ... (so) the sooner we start in all earnestness the better".

East Asia -- basically the 10 countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) plus Japan, China and South Korea -- could "work together to ensure that an expanded Europe and the free trade area of the Americas will not be a threat but an opportunity for us," he said.

At the same time, "we must ensure the strongest productive relations with key countries outside East Asia such as the United States, Saudi Arabia, India, the United Kingdom, France, Germany and Australia".

The United States is the biggest foreign investor in ASEAN, which comprises Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.

Southeast Asia is also America's third largest export market worth about US$50 billion, more than twice the value of its exports to China.

China and ASEAN have already reached a basic consensus that would create the world's biggest trade zone, grouping 1.7 billion consumers with a combined gross domestic product of $2 trillion.

ASEAN hopes to have its own free trade area beginning 2010 and a European-style single market 10 years later.

Abdullah said the idea of an East Asian Community had passed through the three stages identified by German philosopher Schopenhauer for all great ideas in history -- first it was ridiculed, second it was violently opposed and now it was accepted as self-evident.

ASEAN had already "been able to work as one of the most successful regional conflict reduction, peacemaking and friendship-building machines in the history of the modern world," second only to the European Union, he said.

Abdullah listed six "cardinal imperatives" for a broader East Asian Community. It should be: "Egalitarian and democratic; omnidirectional and embracing, turning its back on no one; caring and mutually beneficial; committed to global empowerment; devoted to economic prosperity; obsessive about regional peace and friendship."

Noting that the proposed members of the community already hold an annual summit as ASEAN+3, he suggested that at a future meeting they could produce a "Concord of East Asia" as a symbolic laying down of a major milestone towards the ultimate goal.

Abdullah also suggested the creation of an Asian or East Asian Monetary Fund, which would supplement and not supplant the International Monetary Fund, in the same way the Asian Development Bank did not challenge the World Bank in Washington.

An Asian Monetary Fund was first proposed by Japan in 1997 after the region was thrown into economic turmoil but the idea was also withdrawn after strong US opposition. Many regional leaders had supported Japan, which later refined the idea to complementing IMF loans through a regional currency support mechanism.