“The Future of ASEAN”
Address by H.E. Ong Keng Yong, Secretary-General of ASEAN
Singapore, 22 March 2003
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I am pleased to have this opportunity to share with you my thoughts on the future of ASEAN. I thank the Singapore Institute of International Affairs (SIIA) for inviting me here to address this special gathering this morning.
If you are wondering about the future of ASEAN, worrying about how ASEAN will be hurt by the ongoing war on Iraq, let me assure you that the future of ASEAN is still bright. We all will be adversely affected, one way or another; this is inevitable. But I want to assure you that ASEAN leaders are on top of the situation. They have a good understanding of one another’s national positions. More importantly they are all fully committed to intensifying regional and international cooperation to help everyone in ASEAN cope with all adverse consequences and to make sure that our collective future will be even brighter after this crisis.
The Iraq Crisis
At the outset, allow me to remind all of you here that our region is at peace. We have no quarrel with any of the parties in this war. It is no secret that ASEAN Member Countries have different national positions on this crisis. Last Wednesday in Sabah, ASEAN Foreign Ministers spent almost the entire morning session of their Informal Meeting exchanging views on the Iraq crisis and preparing ASEAN for the impending serious negative consequences of the war.
The mass media tend to focus on the lack of a common ASEAN position on the crisis and jump to the conclusion that ASEAN has become “irrelevant”. This is certainly a wrong conclusion.
The UN Security Council is divided, and President Bush and Prime Minister Blair say the Security Council has been “paralyzed”. But can we conclude that the Security Council is now “irrelevant”? We in ASEAN don’t see it that way. We still believe and hope that the Security Council can still have a role to end the bloodshed, even now when large-scale military action against Iraq is ongoing. In the EU, major EU members are seriously divided on how to disarm Iraq, and the EU has no common position on the crisis. But we certainly would never dismiss the EU as “irrelevant”.
In ASEAN we have 10 sovereign countries participating as equal members. Each member has every right to formulate its own national position, based on its circumstances, that will best serve its own national interest. This is to be expected. The differences in their national positions on the crisis reflect more or less the existing diversities in the ASEAN membership.
ASEAN members clearly differ in many aspects, such as political ideologies and government systems, levels of economic development, sizes of population, cultural affinities, world views and external relations. The ASEAN membership is never intended to replace the national policy of each member government. But it is the indispensable “glue” binding these countries together in “unity in diversities”.
We in ASEAN understand why we differ in our national positions. At the same time we agree that these differences will not prevent us from working together, doing things that we know will be necessary and beneficial to all of us, like in exchanging intelligence to counter terrorism; speeding up economic cooperation schemes to increase business confidence; and preparing to help those in need to cope with any oil shortage arising from the Iraq crisis.
If you are looking specifically at this Iraq crisis, you may be pleased to know that as a matter of fact, all ASEAN members do share many common views. Here are some of them :
+ We oppose the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction (WMD).
+ Uphold the principles and purposes of the UN as enshrined in the Charter of the United Nations.
+ Hope to see the UN continue to receive the respect of all its members, and to have a role in ending the Iraq crisis.
+ Resolve all international conflicts that threaten regional and global security through diplomacy, under the existing framework of the UN and international law.
+ Cooperate with the UN and the international community in providing humanitarian assistance.
These common ASEAN views may not be front-page news, but they reflect the principles that we have spelled out in our 1976 Treaty of Amity and Cooperation in Southeast Asia (the TAC) and the Treaty on Southeast Asia Nuclear Weapon-Free Zone of 1995. Based on these principles, we are maintaining peace and security and making Southeast Asia a zone of peace, freedom and neutrality, which is free of all weapons of mass destruction.
ASEAN has since 1967 provided Southeast Asian countries with a viable process for regional cooperation. We can take pride in the fact that ASEAN has played a crucial role in strengthening regional peace and security in Southeast Asia. ASEAN has developed a vast network of mechanisms to promote cooperation in virtually all important areas of government, involving all levels of government, from the Head of State/Government to Ministers, Senior Officials and technical experts. This is why Timor Leste, upon gaining independence last May, immediately expressed its keen interest to join the ASEAN Family.
Before moving on to other issues, let me emphasize that we can never take peace in our region for granted. In ASEAN we do not equate peace to the absence of war or inter-State hostility. Peace in ASEAN means a collective state of mind that is conducive for good neighbourliness and regional cooperation. Peace also means trying to manage our bilateral differences and trying to resolve them peacefully without allowing them to stand in the way of ASEAN cooperation.
Like all close neighbours, occasional disagreements and disruptions of relations may be unavoidable. Maintaining peace, therefore, requires a great deal of collective efforts and goodwill to work together on the basis of equality and partnership.
Towards An ASEAN Economic Community
In the economic side of ASEAN cooperation, the most exciting issue now is how to advance ASEAN beyond AFTA – the ASEAN Free Trade Area. During the Eighth ASEAN Summit in Phnom Penh last November, the Prime Minister of Singapore put forth an idea of our Association moving towards an ASEAN Economic Community (AEC). Since then follow-up activities have been undertaken to try to flesh out this AEC idea. These activities included the following :
· ISEAS has produced a concept paper on the AEC, which envisages ASEAN evolving into an AEC by the year 2020 that will be more of an “FTA-plus” arrangement, rather than that of a customs union or economic union.
The concept paper is now under consideration of ASEAN member governments. Senior MFA officials (SOM) will discuss it with ASEAN-ISIS in Siem Reap in April 2003.
· ASEAN has commissioned McKinsey & Co to study the ASEAN competitiveness. Its recommendations will include “fast-tracking” the liberalization and market integration in two sectors : electronics and consumer goods.
· The High-Level Task Force, established by the ASEAN Economic Ministers (AEM) convened its inaugural meeting in Bangkok early this month to explore ideas of intensifying ASEAN economic cooperation.
The Task Force will also look into the ISEAS’ concept paper and the initial recommendations of McKinsey & Co at its next meeting in Kuala Lumpur soon.
· The ASEAN Business Advisory Council (ASEAN-BAC) is scheduled to convene its inaugural meeting in Jakarta on 10 April 2003. Members on this Council were appointed by the ASEAN member governments to advise ASEAN leaders on the future direction of ASEAN economic cooperation.
· The ASEAN Economic Ministers will meet in Luang Prabang from 2-4 April 2003 to examine the adverse consequences of the Iraq war on ASEAN economies and how to deal with the situation. More importantly, they will discuss the AEC idea and how to realize the AEC.
The existing economic cooperation schemes in ASEAN serve as a good foundation for an AEC. What we need to improve on is to enhance implementation capability of ASEAN members and ensure compliance. To this end, a new monitoring and compliance mechanism is being established by the AEM. The ASEAN Secretariat will set up a compliance unit to support this new mechanism.
At the same time, ASEAN is mobilizing resources to implement the Initiative for ASEAN Integration (IAI) Work Plan. The Initiative was adopted by ASEAN leaders in their informal summit in Singapore in 2000. The idea was to assist Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Viet Nam – the four new members that joined ASEAN between 1995-1999 – so that they can keep up with the six older members in ASEAN in regional economic cooperation.
The IAI Work Plan, which was endorsed at the Eighth ASEAN Summit in Phnom Penh last November, is a 6-year Work Plan with 54 projects (short-term) and programmes (longer-term) that were formulated after a series of needs assessment in Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Viet Nam, in four sectors : infrastructure, HRD, ICT, and regional economic integration.
External Economic Linkages
In this age of globalization, individual ASEAN members can hardly succeed if each of us tries to go it alone in the global market. Separately, we are too small in economic terms. But collectively we are a market of 520 million with a combined GDP of US$580 billion and total two-way trade of $781 billion (in 2000). In other words, ASEAN is about half the size of China in population and GDP. But we are a bigger trader than China; China’s external trade in 2000 was only US$474 billion. ASEAN is the fourth biggest trader in the world after the EU-15, the US and Japan.
You would be pleased to know that all major economic powers in the world are our key cooperation partners. They all want to trade and increase economic relations with ASEAN. China, for example, is negotiating with ASEAN on a free trade area (FTA) arrangement. Japan is working with ASEAN to prepare a framework agreement on closer economic cooperation (CEP). India and ASEAN are working on a framework agreement to enhance economic cooperation and increase linkages.
President Bush met with seven ASEAN leaders and Secretary-General of ASEAN on 26 October 2002 in Los Cabos, Mexico, on the sidelines of the APEC Economic Leaders Meeting. He proposed the Enterprise for ASEAN Initiative which is aimed at building a network of FTAs between the US and individual ASEAN members.
Ways and means of strengthening economic cooperation between the EU and ASEAN will be further explored when ASEAN Economic Ministers meet with the EU Trade Commissioner in Luang Prabang early next month. ASEAN’s economic cooperation with Australia and New Zealand, comes under the AFTA-CER Closer Economic Partnership.
Additional details of the above arrangements can be found in the ASEAN Secretariat’s publication entitled “Towards a Single Economic Space”.
Suffice it to simply say that with these economic partners all wanting to do business with ASEAN and having optimistic expectations of ASEAN’s economic potential, ASEAN cannot and will not fail.
Some Conclusions
The immediate challenge to ASEAN now is to keep a close lid on the public anger in those ASEAN members that oppose the war on Iraq and guard against exploitation by some extremists who would take advantage of the situation to instigate anti-US/UK feelings and radicalize the moderate Muslims in our region. All ASEAN members know that this is not a war on Islam.
In the longer-term, how successful ASEAN can be depends on how well the Association meets the following major challenges :
· Bridging the development gap in ASEAN, enabling the four new ASEAN members to catch up with the rest and join them in advancing the Association into a more meaningful and more prosperous economic community.
· Creating conducive economic and political climate for free movement of creative and talented people who can bring to ASEAN the technological and value-added edge.
· Managing ASEAN’s external economic linkages to enhance the competitiveness of ASEAN as a regional production and tourist destination, as well as to enhance the competitive edge of individual ASEAN members to trade, innovate, and attract investors and tourists.
· Resolving bilateral differences and tensions in a predictable and systematic way to remove and prevent misunderstanding and ill-feelings between neighbours in our region.
· Intensifying the presence and voice of the moderate forces, especially those with religious influence, so that radical elements do not turn the multi-racial and multi-religious characteristics of ASEAN into anti-establishment advantage.
