Asean 40th AMM’s achievements
The Asean Regional Forum (ARF) opened yesterday under the tragic cloud of the plight of the 21 South Korean hostages threatened with execution by their Taliban captors in Afghanistan. The Cabinet ministers of 30 countries sat down to find ways of working together to meet such threats as global warming, the spread of atom bomb capability in North Korea and Iran and terrorism. They appealed to the Taliban for compassion to their Korean Christian missionary captives, two of whom had been executed before the ARF meeting started.The ARF is an important annual event that comes with the annual Asean Ministerial Meeting. The members of the forum are the 10 Asean members and the Asean secretariat plus Australia, Bangladesh, Canada, China, the European Union, India, Japan, Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (North Korea), Republic of Korea (South Korea), Mongolia, New Zealand, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea, the Russian Federation, Sri Lanka, Timor Leste and the USA.
Despite the gloom of the ARF, there was much joy in the achievements of the 40th Asean Ministerial Meetings on July 30. The ministerial meetings could only take place—and documents could only be signed on July 30—after a lot of work had been done at various task force meetings to draft the Asean Charter, at the Asean standing committee and senior officials’ meetings, at the meeting of the executive committee of the Southeast Asia Nuclear Weapons-Free Zone (SEANWFZ) Treaty, at ad-hoc consultations with East Asian states’ senior officials and at the meeting of the working group for the so-called Asean Human Rights Mechanism and the meeting of the SEANWFZ Commission. These meetings and working sessions took place on July 22 up to the eve of the July 30 AMM.
Secretary Alberto Romulo, chairman of this year’s AMM, gave a press conference detailing the achievements of the 40th AMM late afternoon yesterday.
Perhaps the most important achievement is that the Asean Charter has been readied for the Asean heads of state to approve at the next Asean summit before the year ends.
That Asean’s dialogue partners have unanimously expressed their optimism about the association’s future is an achievement in itself.
Three of the six dialogue partners in Wednesday’s separate Asean Plus one sessions—Canada, New Zealand and the European Union—were particularly impressed by the palpable solidarity among the members and their willingness to be bound by their proposed new charter that will make Asean more rigorous about enforcing its decisions than it has ever been. With the charter, Asean will become rules-based and cease to be the unintrusive discussion group that it has largely been all these decades.
In the separate Asean sessions with Australia, Russia and the United States, these three countries rejoiced in the regional grouping’s being an organization that in the next eight to 10 years is to become a more solid economic unity of 500 million people, their increased purchasing power a boon to global trade and prosperity.
Asean against terrorism
The dialogue partner that stressed Asean’s importance in the global fight against terrorists was Australia. Its foreign minister, Alexander Downer, praised the Philippines, Indonesia, Malaysia and Singapore for contributing to the all-out war against terrorism.
“What happened in the couple of years, the Indonesians, the Filipinos as well as the Malaysians and Singaporeans have been very successful in tracking down terrorists and in some cases they have killed them,” Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer told a press conference.
Australia has been seriously victimized by terrorists. That is why it has been in the forefront of the global war against terror and helping Asean in this effort.
Of the 10 Asean members, the Philippines and in Indonesia are the two that have had the longest history of dealing with homegrown terrorists. Here it is the Abu Sayyaf and Indonesia it is mainly the Jemaah Islamiyah (JI), which has also forged alliances with Filipino rebels.
JI terrorists carried out the monstrous bombing in Bali, Indonesia, that killed over 200 people, mostly Australian tourists, in 2002 and the attack on the Philippine embassy in Jakarta that almost killed Philippine Ambassador Leonides Caday in 2000. The Abu Sayyaf, on the other hand, is notorious for their various deadly attacks on churches, ferries, buses, airports and public markets—and most recently the un-Islamic beheading of fallen Marines killed in an ambush in Basilan.
The Australian foreign minister congratulated the Filipinos for their successes against the ASG and pledged to increase his country’s assistance to Philippine antiterrorism programs.
Promoter of democracy
US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, busy with her efforts to forge a new push for peace in the Middle East, could not make it to the 40th AMM and the ARF. She was, however, ably represented by her deputy secretary, John D. Negroponte.
He lauded Asean for its critical role in promoting democracy in its own region. He specially praised the 40th AMM’s decision to include a human rights provision in the Asean charter.
Canada, New Zealand and the EU also view with special appreciation Asean’s plan to create a human-rights commission.
