Japan and China were not talking. Russia was talking to everybody. Australia was fending off bad press. The Philippines was denying coup rumors. India was offering to teach English. And the US, for once, was looking in from the cold.
On Wednesday, the inaugural East Asia Summit, which brought together 16 regional leaders for the first time, was a mix of here-we-go-again and never-seen-this-before as Asia began shuffling the political deck for the century ahead.
"The East Asia Summit was a great success," declared the host, Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Badawi, in a final news conference. "There was a high degree of acceptance that we are one community with a common interest."
That, in fact, was the lasting question at the end of the one-day meeting, which followed an ASEAN summit.
What is the shape of the region as the "Asian century" begins; is it one community; can it agree on a common interest?
With complex crisscrossing national agendas, the major dynamic was the competition for regional dominance between the established powers -- Japan and the US -- and the rising giant, China.
The US declined to join the summit meeting because of a reluctance to sign a pledge renouncing the use of force and interference in internal affairs in the region.
With the US absent, the competition between Japan and China was played out here in a spat over old war wounds.
Because Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi had again visited a shrine to Japanese who died in World War II, Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao (溫家寶) refused to meet him, placing the association's two most powerful members in mute confrontation.
South Korea was also at loggerheads with Japan over what it saw as Tokyo's failure to acknowledge and adequately address wartime atrocities.
The membership of the group had itself been the subject of dispute, with the eventual admission of Western-oriented Australia and New Zealand which, along with Japan, were seen as conduits for US influence.
The US' absence from this major forum is short-sighted, said Jusuf Wanandi, director of the Center for Strategic and International Studies in Indonesia.
"I know about the mess in the Middle East, but don't be distracted," said Wanandi. "This is definitely, whether you like it or not, the most important region for the future."
Asia needs the US, too, he said, as a balancing force and as an economic partner.
The Southeast Asian group is made up of Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.
The expanded group includes China, Japan and South Korea, which have attended ASEAN summit meetings in the past, as well as the newcomers, India, Australia and New Zealand.
One of the busiest networkers was Russia President Vladimir Putin, who attended as an invited observer and lobbied hard for full membership at the second meeting of the East Asia Summit, which will be held in Manila next year.
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