ASEAN foreign ministers meeting clouded by political uncertainties

SINGAPORE, July 20 Kyodo - Foreign ministers of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations will discuss ways to further strengthen the 41-year-old grouping to create a more unified region in their annual gathering this week but that could be overshadowed by domestic political turmoil and a territorial dispute plaguing some member
countries.

The 10-member ASEAN is preparing to implement a historic charter later this year that will transform the grouping into a more legal and binding entity as the first step to achieve a larger plan for an ASEAN community by 2015.

As part of the charter's goals, it is also attempting to brush up its human rights image in the eyes of the world and establish a dispute settlement mechanism to resolve any misunderstandings on agreements signed among member states.

However, the meeting is taking place amid political turbulence in Malaysia and Thailand, and a territorial dispute that erupted between Thailand and Cambodia in recent days.

It also has to grapple with more immediate concerns such as the
current global food and energy crisis, which has also battered the region.

The ASEAN foreign ministers are expected to discuss the territorial dispute between Thailand and Cambodia, and also political developments in Myanmar at their informal working dinner on Sunday, which kicks off this week's series of ASEAN-led meetings.
On the Thai-Cambodia dispute, the Singapore Foreign Ministry's spokesman for the meeting, Andrew Tan, told reporters ''the way ASEAN has survived all these years is not to allow bilateral disputes to actually affect the grouping's solidarity as well as the grouping's efforts to band closer together as a regional community.''

He said ASEAN would ''encourage both sides to exercise restraint and resolve the issue peacefully.''

However, other officials have told Kyodo News that the ministers would probably not get too involved in these bilateral or domestic political issues due to the group's policy of noninterference in each other's internal affairs.

These political problems have already affected this year's meeting, with Thailand and Cambodia not able to send foreign ministers to the event.

ASEAN hopes to have the charter, which was inked by ASEAN leaders in November last year, fully ratified by all member states by their leaders' summit this November.

So far only seven have ratified it, with some of the founding members
of ASEAN -- Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines -- yet to ratify it.

Philippine legislators in particular have insisted that there must be an improvement in fellow member Myanmar's human rights and democracy record, including the release of political dissident Aung San Suu Kyi, before the charter could be ratified.

Singapore Foreign Minister George Yeo has said in a recent interview with the local media that it will be ''a setback'' for ASEAN if it is not able to get all 10 countries on board.

After year's of clamoring by Western governments and civil societies for ASEAN to do more on human rights, the group is seeking to establish a human rights body as part of the charter, but progress has been proceeding at a snail's pace, with a high-level panel still discussing the concept of the human rights body.

Yeo said in the recent interview that there is no consensus yet among ASEAN members as to what the human rights body would do. ''Whether or not the human rights body we establish will have teeth, I don't know. But it will certainly have a tongue and I hope it will have a sharp tongue.''

Tan said ''it's not a very easy issue for ASEAN'' and it may take a couple of years to launch.

The ministers are also racing to finalize ASEAN's blueprints for a political security community and a socio-and-cultural community for the November summit, with only the economic blueprint completed so far.

The ministers will also review the situation in Myanmar in terms of the flow of foreign assistance for humanitarian and rehabilitation work after the cyclone disaster earlier this year and also political developments in the country.

At Myanmar's insistence, ASEAN officials who have been meeting here ahead of the ministerial meeting have already agreed to tone down the paragraphs on Myanmar in a joint communique that the ministers are expected to issue at their meeting on Monday.

Due to strong opposition from Myanmar, they have backed down from an earlier proposal by Singapore to mention Myanmar political dissident Aung San Suu Kyi by name in the communique, and will only refer to her as the ''NLD leadership'' as in last year's statement.

''We urge Myanmar to take bolder steps toward a peaceful transition to democracy in the near future and working toward the holding of free and fair general elections in 2010 while recognizing the steps undertaken by the government of Myanmar to conduct meetings with all concerned parties including the NLD leadership,'' the final draft will say on Myanmar.

''We reiterated our calls for the release of all political detainees to pave the way for meaningful dialogue involving all parties concerned,'' it says.

The ASEAN ministers will meet with counterparts from outside the region through a meeting with Japan, China and South Korea, and the first meeting of foreign ministers of the 16-nation East Asia Summit on Tuesday.

On Wednesday, ASEAN will have separate meetings with counterparts from its 10 key partners, including U.S. Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice, before capping off the week's series of meetings with the gathering of foreign ministers from the 27-member ASEAN Regional Forum, a loose multilateral security forum on Thursday.

North Korea will accede to ASEAN's nonaggression treaty, the Treaty of Amity and Cooperation in Southeast Asia, at a small signing ceremony on Thursday, becoming the 15th country from outside the region to accede to the treaty.

ASEAN groups Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam.