Security, business may dominate EU-ASEAN talks

Security, business may dominate EU-ASEAN talks

BONN (Reuter): Security concerns and business opportunities are set to dominate a two-day meeting of West European and Southeast Asian foreign ministers beginning today.

Trade and investment between the 12-member European Union and the six-nation Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) is likely to rank high on the agenda of the meeting in Karlsruhe, which takes place in tandem with a conference of EU and ASEAN business leaders in nearby Stuttgart.

But the ministers will also tackle a new subject -- helping ASEAN create new security structures.

"Security is a new subject," a senior German foreign ministry official told reporters.

The 11th EU-ASEAN conference comes at a time when ASEAN, grouping Thailand, Singapore, Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei and the Philippines, has become aware of the need for new post-Cold War security structures in the Asia-Pacific area.

In a shift from ASEAN's founding role as an economic organization in 1967, member nations held the first meeting of a new body designed to secure long-term peace, the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), in Bangkok in July.

The 18-member body includes Russia and China and brings together the United States and all the big Asia-Pacific powers for security talks. The EU is also represented.

Europe's contribution to regional stability, the German official said, would be more in the form of advice than direct cooperation.

"The issue is confidence-building and mechanisms to achieve that," he said, highlighting Europe's experience in developing the Conference on Security and Cooperation in Europe (CSCE) as of principal use to ASEAN.

Stability

Stressing that security and business go hand-in-hand, German Foreign Minister Klaus Kinkel said: "Economic and trade ties can only flourish in a politically stable environment."

"ASEAN and the European Union: we have a lot of ties. We have a lot to offer each other," he said in a newspaper article.

Kinkel, whose country last year launched a determined push to capture a greater share of Asian markets, said he placed great value on the parallel meeting of some 300 EU and ASEAN business leaders in Stuttgart.

Trade between the two regions has quadrupled since 1980 and total volume last year was 50 billion ecu (US$61 billion), according to German government figures.

Concrete solutions to some of the Asia-Pacific region's security problems, such as conflicting claims over the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea, the continuing conflict in Cambodia and human rights in Myanmar, are not expected to emerge.

"ASEAN works on the principle of mutual respect," the ministry official said. "The form of the talks is non-confrontational." "Hot potatoes", he added, would be tackled in bilateral talks.

Subjects that may crop up in such one-on-one chats are the planned hanging in Singapore today of a Dutchman for heroin smuggling and about human rights in East Timor.

The meeting culminates in Stuttgart on Saturday when the foreign ministers and businessmen come together.

The foreign ministers, including those from EU members-in- waiting Austria, Finland, Norway and Sweden, will sign a "Karlsruhe Declaration" to outline future cooperation between the two bodies.