Which bus to East Asian community: EAS or APT?

Endy M. Bayuni, The Jakarta Post, Kuala Lumpur

As historic as Wednesday's inaugural East Asian Summit (EAS) was, doubts remain about its usefulness and the direction this new regional forum will take in the future.

The l6 leaders agreed, after their day-long "retreat" here, to meet again next year and they agreed that the Philippines would host it, again like here, back-to-back with the annual summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

Still the leaders left the Malaysian capital after the summit wondering, as were many analysts, about whether the EAS, as the new forum was now called, would be the vehicle to turn East Asia -- geopolitically rather than geographically defined -- into a community more or less modeled on the European Union.

The other option to get to a community would be the ASEAN Plus Three, or APT, which involves the ASEAN-10 with China, Japan and South Korea. Already in existence for nine years, the APT has begun the preparatory work for an East Asian Community over the last two years. Whether it is the APT or the bigger EAS bus that will take this region to the desired community, one thing leaders agree on is that ASEAN will be in the driver's seat, at least for now.

The community idea was certainly in the back of the mind of host Malaysia when it lobbied for more than 10 years to set up the East Asia Forum. But ironically, it is also this thought that propelled other countries, which geographically are not in East Asia, to join the forum.

This explains why leaders from Australia, New Zealand and India, came to this forum alongside their counterparts from China, Japan and South Korea as well as the 10 ASEAN member countries: Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. Even Russian leader Vladimir Putin was invited as a guest to the inaugural EAS and has put in a request to be accepted as a full member next year.

Nobody certainly would want to miss the chance to get on board the community bus whose passengers include China and India, the two Asian economic giants, as well as other smaller, but rapidly growing economies of the region. Together, they already account for more than half of the world's population.

Australia overcame its ambivalence to the EAS at the last minute when it succumbed to an ASEAN criterion that a participant must first sign the non-aggression Treaty of Amity and Cooperation (TAC) with the Southeast Asian grouping. Australian foreign minister Alexander Downer signed it on Saturday in Kuala Lumpur to pave the way for Prime Minister John Howard's participation.

Since the EAS is essentially an ASEAN initiative, the group says participation by any country is contingent upon three conditions: Signing the TAC, has a "dialog partner" status in ASEAN, and must have substantial relationships with the group. This essentially makes the EAS open to many other non-East Asian countries that meet those criteria.

The United States is closely watching the evolution of this forum and would want to make sure that it does not turn into an exclusive East Asian economic bloc what would undermine its interests in the region. While it already fulfills the last two criteria, it is very unlikely that the United States would sign the TAC.

This virtually rules out any U.S. participation in the EAS in the near future.

Still, the thought that the United States is not invited to a forum that sees the presence of big names like Russia's Putin and prime ministers Wen Jiabao of China and Junichiro Koizumi of Japan raises questions in Washington, even if President George W. Bush has no intention of coming back to Asia so soon after his trip for the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum in Korea in November.

The diplomatic niceties and cordial mood that leaders displayed during the photo-op session after their meeting on Wednesday concealed the deep-seated disagreements, and mutual suspicions, that they have over the future and direction of the EAS.

Malaysia and China, having worked so hard for the creation of the EAS, backtracked on the idea of using EAS as a vehicle to an East Asian community after the forum was expanded to include the non-East Asian countries.

Indonesia and Japan have insisted on a more inclusive forum that involves the three non-East Asian countries.

While they never said it publicly, they fear that a community that restricts membership to East Asia proper (hence the APT process) would be dominated by China. The presence of India, and to a lesser extent Australia, in the EAS-based community would somewhat dilute China's awesome power and domination.

Chinese Prime Minister Wen, mindful of such concerns, reassured the APT members that China would not dominate the forum, and would leave it to ASEAN to determine the pace of the establishment of an East Asian community.

While work for the establishment of an East Asian community via the APT continues, this has not completely shut the gate for the expanded EAS bus to go the same direction. The jury is still out on which bus will be the best, most expedient and most efficient in the way of community building in East Asia.

Ultimately, a lot will depend on ASEAN members who are in the driver's seat.