Leaders of 16 nations from India to New Zealand inaugurated a new forum yesterday in ambitious efforts to chart a pan-Asian community -- a distant goal given rivalries festering among powers such as China and Japan.
The first East Asia Summit was the culmination of three days of meetings among the region's leaders in Kuala Lumpur, hosted by the 10-member ASEAN.
"It was very historic," Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo told reporters after the three-and-a-half-hour summit, noting that the group represents half the world's population and a third of its trade and income.
"The combined political will can do much to address issues that are of great interest to the region," she said.
The 10 ASEAN leaders joined with counterparts from Japan, China, India, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand. Russia attended as an observer, but there was no decision on its aspirations to be a full member.
Australian Prime Minister John Howard suggested the group stick with the current lineup for now: "It's a very manageable number around the table. If you make things too big, you lose the value."
The leaders pledged to cooperate in fighting bird flu, discuss security issues and meet every year, as sought by India.
India also is pushing for strong European-style integration aiming for a regionwide free trade area. However, no concrete action was taken toward that end.
A summit statement said merely that the group "could play a significant role in community-building in the region," but stressed its efforts wouldn't conflict with WTO talks on global free trade, currently under way in Hong Kong.
The Malaysia host, Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, said the leaders agreed that an "East Asia Community will be a reality in future as cooperation becomes stronger."
Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi told other leaders that the East Asia Summit in coming years should "evolve into an opportunity for tackling concrete issues, not for just talk."
China and South Korea declined to hold one-on-one meetings with Japan during the summit. Both countries feel that Japan has not fully atoned for its brutal World War II past.
Indonesian Foreign Ministry spokesman Marty Natalegawa said continued tensions between Japan and China "would be inconsistent with the launching of an East Asian Community."
"Our hope has been that the two countries can find a way out of this situation," he said.
ASEAN comprises Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.
Malaysia originally proposed the East Asia Summit as ASEAN plus Japan, China and South Korea, aiming to reduce US influence in the region.
But it took off only after the grouping evolved to include US allies Australia and New Zealand, with tacit approval of Washington, where officials have said they'll wait to see how the bloc's goals emerge before taking a firm stance on it.
The CIA has a message for Chinese government officials worried about their place in Chinese President Xi Jinping’s (習近平) government: Come work with us. The agency released two Mandarin-language videos on social media on Thursday inviting disgruntled officials to contact the CIA. The recruitment videos posted on YouTube and X racked up more than 5 million views combined in their first day. The outreach comes as CIA Director John Ratcliffe has vowed to boost the agency’s use of intelligence from human sources and its focus on China, which has recently targeted US officials with its own espionage operations. The videos are “aimed at
STEADFAST FRIEND: The bills encourage increased Taiwan-US engagement and address China’s distortion of UN Resolution 2758 to isolate Taiwan internationally The Presidential Office yesterday thanked the US House of Representatives for unanimously passing two Taiwan-related bills highlighting its solid support for Taiwan’s democracy and global participation, and for deepening bilateral relations. One of the bills, the Taiwan Assurance Implementation Act, requires the US Department of State to periodically review its guidelines for engagement with Taiwan, and report to the US Congress on the guidelines and plans to lift self-imposed limitations on US-Taiwan engagement. The other bill is the Taiwan International Solidarity Act, which clarifies that UN Resolution 2758 does not address the issue of the representation of Taiwan or its people in
US Indo-Pacific Commander Admiral Samuel Paparo on Friday expressed concern over the rate at which China is diversifying its military exercises, the Financial Times (FT) reported on Saturday. “The rates of change on the depth and breadth of their exercises is the one non-linear effect that I’ve seen in the last year that wakes me up at night or keeps me up at night,” Paparo was quoted by FT as saying while attending the annual Sedona Forum at the McCain Institute in Arizona. Paparo also expressed concern over the speed with which China was expanding its military. While the US
SHIFT: Taiwan’s better-than-expected first-quarter GDP and signs of weakness in the US have driven global capital back to emerging markets, the central bank head said The central bank yesterday blamed market speculation for the steep rise in the local currency, and urged exporters and financial institutions to stay calm and stop panic sell-offs to avoid hurting their own profitability. The nation’s top monetary policymaker said that it would step in, if necessary, to maintain order and stability in the foreign exchange market. The remarks came as the NT dollar yesterday closed up NT$0.919 to NT$30.145 against the US dollar in Taipei trading, after rising as high as NT$29.59 in intraday trading. The local currency has surged 5.85 percent against the greenback over the past two sessions, central
RSS