Myanmar suggests it will forego ASEAN chairmanship
Myanmar suggests it will forego ASEAN chairmanship
Jasbant Singh, Associated Press/Vientiane
Military-ruled Myanmar hinted on Sunday it would forgo a regional chairmanship to spare neighbors from rebukes by the West over the junta's poor democracy record, as Asia-Pacific nations opened their top annual security conference.
Australia also was set to embrace a regional nonaggression pact, reversing longstanding opposition after Asian neighbors made the accord a condition for attending a summit next December aimed at moving toward a big East Asian trade bloc.
Canberra will sign a declaration of intent to join the pact during the six-day conference in Laos and have its parliament ratify the pact before signing it by December, Laotian Deputy Foreign Minister Bounkeut Sangsomsak said on Sunday.
The 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations plus more than a dozen other governments with interests in the region -- such as the U.S., Russia, European Union and China -- opened talks leading up to the ASEAN Regional Forum on Thursday and Friday.
Forum officials worked on an agreement about sharing intelligence to better combat international terrorism, officials said.
"The recent bombings in London and Egypt are a reminder that this sort of thing can take place at any time and any place," Indonesian Foreign Ministry spokesman Marty Natalegawa said.
Impoverished Laos, holding only its second such conference, deployed soldiers in armored cars at intersections in tropical Vientiane and along the main road to the nearby Mekong River separating the country from Thailand.
The main venue's corrugated metal roof was pelted with rain on Sunday, filling the cavernous interior with an earsplitting sizzle. Conference spokesman Yong Chanthalangsy said VIP meeting rooms were protected by a new layer of grass thatch -- though the main hall was left unthatched.
"Even if there is a downpour now, it will not disturb the meeting because we have grass covering the roof. The rain will hit the grass, not the roof," Yong said.
Myanmar's colleagues in ASEAN have urged it to meet U.S. and European Union demands to liberalize and release pro-democracy campaigner Aung San Suu Kyi or forgo its scheduled chairmanship of the bloc in late 2006.
The U.S. and EU have threatened to boycott ASEAN meetings if Myanmar becomes the bloc's leader, and Southeast Asian nations fear it could endanger trade ties with the West.
Myanmar's delegation was widely expected to announce this week it would step aside.
Myanmar Foreign Ministry official Thuang Tun strongly suggested that in comments to reporters on Sunday, though he declined to confirm it.
"We do not want to have our friends in a very difficult position," he said. "If we just insist for the sake of insisting then we have a situation where ASEAN would be in a difficult position and we do not want to put ASEAN in a difficult position."
The U.S. secretary of state is skipping the ASEAN ministerial meeting -- sending a deputy instead -- for the first time since 1982. The meeting was expanded to include the security-oriented ASEAN Regional Forum in 1994.
The no-show provoked speculation that it was a U.S. warning not to give Myanmar the chairmanship, or that Washington's priority was the Mideast over Asia.
New Zealand and Mongolia were expected to join ASEAN's nonaggression pact, which the bloc also has signed with nations such as China, Russia, Japan, India and Pakistan.
Australia long refused to join, saying it could interfere with its 54-year-old defense treaty with Washington. But ASEAN made it a prerequisite for attending December's inaugural East Asia Summit in Malaysia.
Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said on Sunday that Canberra is eager to attend the summit, and hopes to resolve concerns over the friendship pact in Laos.
Negotiations among six nations aimed at getting North Korea to scrap its nuclear weapons program resume separately on Tuesday in Beijing. However, foreign ministers for those nations will be in Laos, where they also could discuss the standoff.