The asean ministerial and related meetings

(This article of Rodolfo C. Severino in the Singapore Straits Times deserves reprint for the Filipino readership. He is a former secretary general of ASEAN and current head of the ASEAN Studies Centre at the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies.)

On the 19th of July, in Bali, Indonesia, the foreign ministers of the Association of SoutheastAsian Nations (ASEAN) will meet, as they have done every year since 1967, when their predecessors met in Bangkok and signed ASEAN’s founding document. They will, as usual,also be gathering informally over dinner, in the corridors or on the golf course.

Whether at their formal meeting or more informally, the ASEAN foreign ministers will have to carry out important mandates that their leaders gave them at the ASEAN Summit of May 2011. Specifically, they will have to make recommendations on at least two critical decision points that will profoundly affect ASEAN – Myanmar’s proposal to assume the ASEAN chair in 2014 and Timor-Leste’s application for ASEAN membership.

The chairman’s statement on the May 2011 ASEAN Summit had this to say on the issue of Myanmar’s ASEAN chairmanship, “We considered the proposal of Myanmar to host the ASEAN Summits in 2014, based on its firm commitment to the principles of ASEAN.” Whether the foreign ministers will come to an agreement on their recommendation to the leaders on this question remains to be seen.

On Timor-Leste’s application for ASEAN membership, the leaders, according to the chairman’s statement, asked their foreign ministers “to look at this issue very closely and provide recommendations for the Leaders’ consideration at a later stage with a view to a decision later in 2011”. The foreign ministers will have to make a recommendation on this matter, one way or another, before November 2011, when the leaders are scheduled to hold their next summit meeting.

As in previous years, the foreign ministers are expected to receive a briefing from their new Myanmar colleague, Wunna Maung Lwin, on the latest developments in his country. During the transition between governments in Thailand following the July 3 elections there, the foreign ministers may be eager to know about the situation in that country and possible developments in the Thai perspective on the Cambodia-Thailand border conflict. They may be interested particularly in Thailand’s outlook on the terms of reference, agreed upon with Cambodia, of the observers from Indonesia as current ASEAN chair.

After their own meetings, the ASEAN foreign ministers will gather with their counterparts from ASEAN’s Dialogue Partners in what are called the Post-Ministerial Conferences, together and individually.

For a long time, the PMC involved six developed countries – Australia, Canada, the European Union, Japan, New Zealand and the United States. Now, it includes four other states – South Korea, China, India and Russia – the last three having been conferred Dialogue Partner status in 1996.

Together, the ministers will have the opportunity to talk not only about Asia-Pacific issues – the South China Sea, Myanmar, the Korean peninsula, the Cambodia-Thailand conflict – but also about other matters of global import – the non-proliferation of nuclear weapons, Israel-Palestine issues, the “Arab Spring” and Western policies on it, and the global economy.

The individual PMC will be an occasion for foreign ministers to review ASEAN’s relations with each Dialogue Partner, including those at operational levels. With China, ASEAN could talk about the South China Sea and the opportunities presented by China as a market and a source of investments. With the US, ASEAN could discuss the South China Sea and the US stake in it, American participation in the East Asia Summit, and the US as a leading market and source of investments for Southeast Asia.

The PMC will be followed by the ASEAN Regional Forum, the only region-wide ministerial forum on political and security issues pertaining to Asia and the Pacific. In addition to ASEAN’s ten members and ten Dialogue Partners, the ARF has seven other participants – Bangladesh, North Korea, Mongolia, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea, Sri Lanka and Timor-Leste.

In the ARF, the South China Sea will surely be discussed. In particular, the statement of the US Secretary of State will be parsed, as will the Chinese response. Will the US reiterate its fundamental position on and interest in the South China Sea and at what level of assertiveness? On the other hand, will the US be more conciliatory towards China on this issue? Will China clarify to some extent the nature of its claims to the waters of the South China Sea? Will its response be more or less vehement than in 2010? ASEAN as a group is deeply interested in these questions in the light of its concerns over peace and stability and freedom of navigation and overflight in the area as well as in good China-US relations.

As in the case of the PMC, no less important than the media-attractive ministerial gathering are the ARF activities between ministerial-level discussions. Among such activities are those pertaining to security policy, counter-terrorism and transnational crime, cybercrime, maritime security, defence education, and disaster relief. Also expected to be reviewed by the ministers, these activities foster networking and confidence-building, promote the habit of cooperation, and make possible coordination and inter-operability.

In addition to these vital political and security issues, the ASEAN foreign ministers would also do well to discuss not only the ASEAN Political and Security Community, but also the ASEAN Economic Community, specifically the political obstacles to the achievement of the AEC by 2015, its publicly set target-year. To be sure, the AEC is the domain of the ASEAN economic ministers. However, the obstacles to it are primarily political, whether in terms of customs reform, non-tariff barriers, trade in services, product standards, transportation, communications, or information technology. ASEAN has agreements on all of these, but their implementation is hampered by domestic political considerations.

ASEAN and its member-states have a stake and interest in ASEAN cohesion and credibility, qualities that can be advanced only if the political obstacles to regional economic integration are overcome.