Australian Prime Minister John Howard, who was to meet Southeast Asian leaders yesterday, faced pressure to sign a non-aggression pact with the region to dispel concern about his policy of pre-emptive strikes.
Howard has riled Australia's neighbors with tough talk of possible pre-emptive strikes against terrorist bases overseas, widely interpreted to mean Indonesia, although this has repeatedly been denied by Canberra.
PHOTO: EPA
ASEAN calls for Howard to sign the deal have grown louder ahead of his debut at the 10-nation group's summit, where he wants to launch talks toward a free trade deal.
"We are encouraging Australia and New Zealand to join us to accede to the TAC [Treaty of Amity and Cooperation] which they have not yet done," Philippine Foreign Minister Alberto Romulo said late Monday.
"We think that it's high time that Australia gives it serious consideration," Thai foreign ministry spokesman Sihasak Phunketkeow said.
ASEAN, which largely sees Australia as closer to the West than Asia, wants assurances about Australia's intentions.
"The way Indonesia sees it, there can be no more efficient and effective way for Australia to dispel misperceptions some quarters may have of its intentions in Southeast Asia than to simply accede to the TAC," Indonesian foreign ministry spokesman Marty Natalegawa said at the weekend.
But Australia insists it is no threat.
"There's no question of attacking Asian nations. We are a threat to nobody," Defense Minister Robert Hill said in Sydney yesterday.
"We are a peace-loving country. We will protect Australians and Australian interests, but we are a threat to nobody. Asian countries know that as well," he said.
Islamic militants have twice targeted Australians or the country's interests in Indonesia in recent years, in the 2002 Bali bombings which killed 88 Australians and in the September bombing of the Australian embassy in Jakarta.
ASEAN officials stress accession to the non-aggression treaty -- which has been signed by seven countries outside of ASEAN, including China and India -- is not a precondition for free-trade talks.
The pact calls for signatories to commit to "non-interference in the internal affairs of one another," a "renunciation of the threat or use of force" and the settlement of disputes by "peaceful means."
Canberra says this would bar it from criticizing the domestic policies of ASEAN members, for example Myanmar's internationally reviled regime.
Howard insisted Monday the TAC issue remained separate from the trade deal.
"They are two separate issues so we shouldn't confuse the two and that has been made very clear," he said in Sydney.
Negotiations on the trade deal that were expected to be announced yesterday are scheduled to run for two years, after which Australia and New Zealand would then be formally linked with the ASEAN trade bloc during the 10 years to 2017.
The aim of the agreement is to double trade and investment by 2010. Two-way trade in goods and services between ASEAN and the two countries totalled US$34.5 billion and investments reached US$8.4 billion last year.
Their combined annual economic output of US$1.3 trillion is nearly as big as that of China's US$1.4 trillion last year.
ASEAN comprises Brunei, Cambodia, Laos, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.
In the sweltering streets of Jakarta, buskers carry towering, hollow puppets and pass around a bucket for donations. Now, they fear becoming outlaws. City authorities said they would crack down on use of the sacred ondel-ondel puppets, which can stand as tall as a truck, and they are drafting legislation to remove what they view as a street nuisance. Performances featuring the puppets — originally used by Jakarta’s Betawi people to ward off evil spirits — would be allowed only at set events. The ban could leave many ondel-ondel buskers in Jakarta jobless. “I am confused and anxious. I fear getting raided or even
POLITICAL PATRIARCHS: Recent clashes between Thailand and Cambodia are driven by an escalating feud between rival political families, analysts say The dispute over Thailand and Cambodia’s contested border, which dates back more than a century to disagreements over colonial-era maps, has broken into conflict before. However, the most recent clashes, which erupted on Thursday, have been fueled by another factor: a bitter feud between two powerful political patriarchs. Cambodian Senate President and former prime minister Hun Sen, 72, and former Thai prime minister Thaksin Shinawatra, 76, were once such close friends that they reportedly called one another brothers. Hun Sen has, over the years, supported Thaksin’s family during their long-running power struggle with Thailand’s military. Thaksin and his sister Yingluck stayed
Kemal Ozdemir looked up at the bare peaks of Mount Cilo in Turkey’s Kurdish majority southeast. “There were glaciers 10 years ago,” he recalled under a cloudless sky. A mountain guide for 15 years, Ozdemir then turned toward the torrent carrying dozens of blocks of ice below a slope covered with grass and rocks — a sign of glacier loss being exacerbated by global warming. “You can see that there are quite a few pieces of glacier in the water right now ... the reason why the waterfalls flow lushly actually shows us how fast the ice is melting,” he said.
RESTRUCTURE: Myanmar’s military has ended emergency rule and announced plans for elections in December, but critics said the move aims to entrench junta control Myanmar’s military government announced on Thursday that it was ending the state of emergency declared after it seized power in 2021 and would restructure administrative bodies to prepare for the new election at the end of the year. However, the polls planned for an unspecified date in December face serious obstacles, including a civil war raging over most of the country and pledges by opponents of the military rule to derail the election because they believe it can be neither free nor fair. Under the restructuring, Myanmar’s junta chief Min Aung Hlaing is giving up two posts, but would stay at the
RSS