Military-ruled Myanmar yesterday hinted that it would forego a regional chairmanship to spare neighbors from rebukes by the West over the junta's poor democracy record, as Asia-Pacific nations opened their top annual security conference.
Australia also was set to embrace a regional nonaggression pact, reversing longstanding opposition after Asian neighbors made the accord a prerequisite for attending a summit next December aimed at moving toward a big East Asian trade bloc.
A draft conference statement obtained by the media said Australia would sign a declaration of intent to join the treaty before the conference in the Laotian capital ends on Friday.
The 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations plus more than a dozen other governments with interests in the region -- such as the US, Russia, EU and China -- opened talks leading up to Friday's ASEAN Regional Forum. Forum officials worked on a statement about sharing intelligence to better combat international terrorism.
"The recent bombings in London and Egypt are a reminder that this sort of thing can take place at any time and any place," Indonesian Foreign Ministry spokesman Marty Natalegawa said.
Impoverished Laos, holding only its second such conference ever, deployed soldiers in armored cars at intersections in tropical Vientiane and along the main road to the nearby Mekong River separating the country from Thailand.
Myanmar's colleagues in ASEAN have urged it to meet US and EU demands to liberalize and release pro-democracy campaigner Aung San Suu Kyi from house arrest or forgo its scheduled chairmanship of the group in late 2006. Malaysia will take over from Laos this week. Both the US and EU have threatened to boycott ASEAN meetings if Myanmar becomes the bloc's leader, and Southeast Asian nations fear the issue could endanger trade ties with the West.
Myanmar's delegation was widely expected to announce this week it would step aside.
"We do not want to have our friends in a very difficult position," Myanmar Foreign Ministry official Thaung Tun told reporters yesterday, suggesting Myanmar would step aside though declining to confirm that.
"If we just insist for the sake of insisting then we have a situation where ASEAN would be in a difficult position and we do not want to put ASEAN in a difficult position," he said.
ASEAN comprises Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. They are joined this week in Vientiane by Australia, Canada, China, EU, India, Japan, Mongolia, New Zealand, North Korea, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea, Russia, South Korea and the US.
The US secretary of state will skip the conference for the first time in about two decades, sending a deputy instead. Southeast Asia diplomats are not happy that US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice will miss Asia's main security forum but her absence is unlikely to affect ties between the 10-nation ASEAN and Washington, officials said. Rice said this month she would skip the ASEAN Regional Forum because of a scheduling conflict.
Negotiations among six nations aimed at getting North Korea to scrap its nuclear weapons program resume separately in Beijing on Tuesday. However, foreign minister for those nations will be in Laos where they also could meet to discuss the standoff.
New Zealand and Mongolia were expected to add their signatures to ASEAN's nonaggression pact, which the bloc also has signed with nations such as China, Russia, Japan, India and Pakistan. Australia long refused to join, calling it a Cold War relic that could interfere with its 54-year-old defense pact with the US. But ASEAN made it a prerequisite for attending the inaugural East Asia Summit next December in Malaysia, expected to begin moves toward a major trade bloc.
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