Southeast Asian leaders, buoyed by a friendship treaty with Australia and an economic cooperation pact with Russia, prepared yesterday for their annual summit, weighed down by frustrations with Myanmar and the threat of bird flu.
The two-day ASEAN summit starting today will culminate in the inaugural East Asia Summit on Wednesday, when the 16 participating leaders will pledge to fight bird flu.
A joint declaration to be issued Wednesday by the 16 countries will contain specific measures including sharing of resources and stockpiling of drugs, said ASEAN secretary-general Ong Keng Yong.
PHOTO: AP
"The important thing is that the 16 countries will give their political commitment," he told reporters. "It's action-oriented."
The declaration pledges a raft of other steps to control the disease that has killed 69 people in Asia since 2003 and left millions of poultry dead or culled. Experts fear the H5N1 virus strain could trigger a human flu pandemic if it mutates into a form that is easily spread between people.
According to the declaration, the leaders will also commit to be transparent in informing other governments of the situation in their countries.
High world oil prices and terrorism will figure prominently in the talks.
The East Asia Summit was conceived by ASEAN as it seeks wider integration with the region to energize the economies of their 10 members -- a region of 530 million people and a combined economy of more than US$1.4 trillion. However, ASEAN accounts for just 6 percent of world exports.
The East Asia Summit puts the region together with economic powerhouses China, India, Japan, South Korea, Australia as well as New Zealand -- amounting to half the world's population and a combined economy of US$8.3 trillion.
The Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi said in a speech Saturday that India and China combined would outstrip the US as the dominant global economy by 2050.
"To keep pace with China and India, ASEAN would need to maintain the momentum of improving its business-friendly environment," Abdullah said.
Russia is waiting in the wings, anxious to join the East Asia Summit but has been held back because it fails to meet a key prerequisite of having substantial trade ties with ASEAN.
On Saturday, Australia signed the Treaty of Amity and Cooperation with ASEAN, a nonaggression pledge that allowed it a seat at the East Asia Summit.
Canberra had refused to sign for more than a decade, saying it could conflict with obligations under its security treaty with the US. But signing is a small price to pay in return for the benefits of ties with ASEAN, Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said.
Meanwhile, Malaysia's foreign minister said the US is welcome to join the East Asia Summit in coming years provided it joins the nonagression pact.
Foreign Minister Syed Hamid Albar said over the weekend that the grouping is not an "exclusive club," and that the US and other countries outside Asia can join.
However, they must meet three prerequisites: become a dialogue partner of ASEAN, have substantial ties with the region and sign the bloc's Treaty of Amity and Cooperation. The US fulfills the first two conditions.
"We are not looking at political and security alone, but also economic and investment aspects," Syed Hamid told reporters.
"We will have no difficulties to embrace the US," he said. "But one of the conditions is that it has to sign the Treaty of Amity and Cooperation."
Given Washington's policy of reserving the right to attack a country that it sees as a threat, the US seems unlikely to sign the treaty, which also stresses noninterference in the internal affairs of signatories.
At a leadership forum in Malaysia earlier this year, former US Secretary of State Colin Powell noted that Washington gets "a little bit uneasy" whenever it sees organizations being formed with even a partial agenda to "push back and isolate the United States."
The annual summit also comes at a time when ASEAN is facing a crisis of reputation over fellow member Myanmar's glacial pace of democratic reforms.
ASEAN members are also unhappy about the continued house arrest of pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi by the country's military junta.
The frustrations of Myanmar's ASEAN colleagues, under pressure from the US and Europe to bring the junta in line, have been made clear to Myanmar, Ong, the ASEAN official said.
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