Myanmar casts shadow over ASEAN, group still global player

Myanmar casts shadow over ASEAN, group still global player

Roberto Coloma, Agence France-Presse/Singapore

The Myanmar issue is threatening to damage ASEAN's international standing but the group remains an indispensable player in promoting regional cooperation and stability, diplomats and analysts say.

Foreign ministers of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) will gather in the Laotian capital Vientiane next week for an annual meeting whose traditional highlight is the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) on security.

The forum is the only annual meeting in which Asian security issues are discussed at the highest diplomatic levels.

But military-ruled Myanmar's imminent turn to lead the group in 2006 is causing problems ahead of the Laos meeting and threatens to cause further repercussions.

If Myanmar takes over the ASEAN chairmanship from Malaysia in 2006 under an alphabetical rotation system, the United States and European Union (EU) are likely to boycott key meetings with the grouping.

In what is seen as an indication of things possibly to come, U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, citing scheduling conflicts, will skip the ASEAN Regional Forum, sending her deputy Robert Zoellick instead.

"This is something unusual but regardless, the ASEAN dialog process will move forward. (Rice's absence) will not get in the way of dialog at the ARF," Indonesian foreign ministry spokesman Marty Natalegawa said on Friday.

Some ASEAN members cringe at the thought of Myanmar presiding over the group in 2006, but there is no precedent for forcing it to give up its turn.

This leaves voluntary relinquishment as the only face-saving way out.

"Myanmar has told us, and Myanmar has told other countries in Southeast Asia, that it will not be selfish and that it will take into account the interests of ASEAN as a whole," said Singapore's Foreign Minister George Yeo.

The other countries "took that to mean that Myanmar might withdraw on its own from assuming the chair," he told foreign correspondents last month.

But such a move -- which could take place in Laos next week -- might hurt the organization's efforts to promote democratic reform in Myanmar, ASEAN's secretary-general Ong Ken Yong warned.

"How are we going to leverage for the early release of Aung San Suu Kyi and whatever things we want in Myanmar?" Ong said in a recent interview with AFP, referring to Myanmar's opposition leader and Nobel Peace Prize laureate who has been under house arrest for most of the last 15 years.

Founded in 1967 by anti-communist nations at the height of the Vietnam War, ASEAN has since embraced Vietnam itself. Its other members are Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand.

All 10 countries have a collective population of half a billion people moving toward a regional free trade zone.

Some ASEAN members now say it was premature to induct Myanmar as a member in 1997.

But American business consultant Ernest Bower, the former head of the U.S.-ASEAN Business Council, said "it is too easy to look back and say admitting Myanmar into ASEAN was a mistake".

If Myanmar did reform, ASEAN would have been seen as "prescient" and Malaysia's former prime minister Mahathir Mohamad would have become "a hero" for strongly backing Myanmar's entry, he told AFP.

"Things did not go that way, and they have gone bad internally, and Myanmar is stuck politically," Bower said.

"However, there are some in ASEAN who argue that admitting Myanmar was still the right thing to do, because it helped mitigate what could have been worse developments inside Myanmar," he said.

Bower said Myanmar could have moved closer to China and the flow of drugs and refugees across borders could have worsened "if Myanmar remained an isolated rogue state".

The association's former secretary-general Rodolfo Severino told AFP "the only thing worse than having Myanmar inside ASEAN is to have it outside ASEAN".

"There were strong strategic reasons for accepting -- indeed, inviting -- Myanmar into ASEAN. This does not mean that ASEAN countries cannot encourage and prod Myanmar into improving the situation inside the country and its relations with its neighbors."

In Laos, foreign ministers will lay the groundwork for the inaugural East Asia Summit in Malaysia in December.

The Malaysia meet will be the third international summit constructed around ASEAN after the Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) and the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) group, including the United States, Canada and Latin America, further cementing ASEAN's central role in regional cooperation.

It will bring together all ASEAN members, traditional partners China, Japan and South Korea and -- if they sign a key treaty - India, Australia and New Zealand as well.

"The East Asia Summit revolves around ASEAN," said Severino, who also stressed that the group handles the Myanmar issue separately from its relations with dialog partners.

Bower said that with the new summit, ASEAN "retains, at least for another few years, its role as the foundation of East Asian economic regionalism" but must speed up its own integration to stay competitive against emerging giants China and India.