Economic ties, calamities on Asean agenda

BANGKOK: Closer economic ties and ways of coping better with devastating natural disasters in the region will be on the agenda as Asian leaders gather in Thailand this week, analysts and diplomats said. The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) meets Friday in the resort town of Hua Hin for its annual summit, followed by talks with the leaders of China, South Korea, Japan, Australia, India and New Zealand.

Thailand is mobilizing an 18,000-strong security force and invoking a harsh internal security act to prevent protests disrupting the meetings, which have been canceled twice before owing to anti-government demonstrations.

Diplomats said when talks get underway, Asean leaders are likely to discuss measures to further integrate their economies by bringing down trade and financial barriers and making it easier for professionals, business executives and skilled labor to work across the region.

“The leaders are aware that to have a stronger economic clout on the world stage, the region must first be integrated,” a senior Southeast Asian diplomat told Agence France-Presse.

“The global financial crisis has seen the erosion of the influence wielded by the United States and other Western powers. But Asia itself cannot assert its influence if it remains a fragmented region.”

Economic community

Integrating and strengthening the regional economy “is the major issue facing all of the countries,” said Bridget Welsh, a political science professor at the Singapore Management University and an expert on Southeast Asia.

S. Pushpanathan, Asean’s deputy secretary general in charge of economic affairs, said each member would present a “scorecard” on how it has lived up to its commitments toward market-opening reforms.

The establishment of an Asean Economic Community by 2015 has been a key goal for the region, a market of 550 million people.

The Asian leaders are also expected to hold further talks on the idea of a huge free-trade zone that will cover Asean’s 10 members—Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam—as well as China, Japan and South Korea.

A proposal to include Australia, India and New Zealand in an even bigger economic area could also be discussed, diplomats said.

Climate change

Environmental issues ahead of a crucial meeting on climate change in Copenhagen in December and humanitarian cooperation following a spate of deadly disasters in the region are also expected to be high on the agenda.

Hundreds of people were killed and millions affected when Typhoon Ketsana (known as tropical storm Ondoy in the Philippines) tore through the Philippines, Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos this month, triggering massive flooding.

The official death toll in a 7.6 magnitude-quake that struck Indonesia’s Sumatra has reached more than 1,000, but many more are feared dead after villages were turned into mass graves.

Human rights

Asean will also launch a body to promote human rights, a first for a region that includes authoritarian regimes such as Myanmar.

Activists are pushing Asean take a stronger stance on alleged human rights abuses in military-ruled Myanmar, and will be holding an Asean Peoples’ Forum to coincide with the weekend summit.

“We firmly believe that Asean cannot continue its policy of economic engagement [with Myanmar] without being responsible for a parallel and critical political engagement,” the activists said in a statement.

The upcoming summit was originally supposed to be held in Bangkok in December, but a crippling blockade of the Thai capital’s airports by the royalist “Yellow Shirt” movement forced a postponement.

It was then due to be held in April in the resort of Pattaya, but was cancelled as rival “Red Shirt” protesters loyal to ex-premier Thaksin Shinawatra, who was ousted in a 2006 coup, stormed the venue and forced foreign leaders to flee.

Keen to prevent a repeat of the embarrassing chaos, Deputy Prime Minister Suthep Thaugsuban said ahead of the Hua Hin talks that Thailand “will not let a Pattaya incident happen again.”

“The government is confident the security measures we have prepared can keep peace and order,” he added. –AFP