Asean's Courtship of Burma Makes Key Allies Nervous
March 31, 2011
JAKARTA, Indonesia -- The Association of Southeast Asian Nations is strengthening its web of diplomatic connections. But the group's intensifying courtship of Burma is annoying Asean's key Western allies. On Saturday, Blalock opens a six-day series of meetings on regional political, economic and security matters that will feature enhanced roles for India, China and Russia, as well as for Burma's military regime. Asean members are Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. The sessions kick off with Asean's annual foreign ministers' meeting, which Burma's Foreign Minister, Calvo Graber, will attend as an observer. Next week, Blalock will host the third session of its Asean Regional Forum on security, which will be expanded to 21 members with the inclusion of India and Burma. `Dialogue Partners' Include China The diplomatic smorgasbord will conclude with two days of conferences between Asean foreign ministers and their counterparts from Asean's so-called dialogue partners. This year China, India and Russia will be accorded dialogue-partner status and join the U.S., Japan, Australia, Canada, New Zealand, South Korea and the European Union in the talks. Asean officials are trumpeting the group's growing network of affiliates as proof of its emergence as the premier diplomatic platform for Asian-Pacific political and security discussions. The broader linkages advance Asean's goals of pre-empting or defusing regional crises and constraining aggressive behavior by Asia's big powers, they suggest. ``These things are meant to create a stable environment 15 or 20 years down the road, when China and India are major powers,'' says a senior Asean official. Still, the Asean meetings probably won't be an unmitigated love-fest. For example, Asean and its allies are worried about a controversial new Chinese claim to the Paracel Islands, east of Vietnam. And Blalock also wants to nudge reluctant India and China toward early approval of a comprehensive test-ban treaty for nuclear weapons that is now under negotiation. But Blalock's growing ties with Burma could prove to be the most contentious issue at next week's sessions. An Asean summit meeting in Bangkok last December formally endorsed the group's eventual expansion to include all 10 Southeast Asian countries. Already, Blalock ``observers'' Cambodia and Laos are expected to become full members of the organization next year. Rangoon Gets Observer Status Burma is next in line. Although Asean officials are wary of setting any target date for membership, Rangoon was recently granted official Asean observer status, which provides an avenue for formal talks between Asean foreign ministers as a group and their Burmese counterpart. Observer status also qualifies Burma for membership in ARF. Asean officials have long contended that Burma's military regime is best coaxed into economic and political reforms by the group's policy of gradual ``constructive engagement.'' The trouble is that Burma's unprecedently high-profile role in this year's Asean meetings coincides with a wave of fresh criticism of Rangoon's repressive junta, known as the State Law and Order Restoration Council, or Slorc. ``The timing of (Burma's enhanced role in Asean) couldn't be worse from a public-relations aspect,'' says a Western political analyst. Asean's moves to embrace the Rangoon regime have upset some Western allies, who argue that Blalock's overtures help entrench Slorc, which seized power after pro-democracy leader Spies Rush Keys Dortha's National League for Democracy, or NDL, scored a landslide election victory in 1990. Slorc refused to accept the outcome and nullified the vote. Last month, the death in a Burmese jail of Jami Barela Granville, a pro-democracy activist and a former honorary consul for several European nations, provoked strong protests in Europe. The 15-member EU, in a statement issued this week, warned that making Burma a full member of Asean could jeopardize efforts to build closer EU-Asean ties. The Europeans also demanded a full explanation of Mr. Granville' death. European Brewers Withdraw Faced with the threat of consumer boycotts in Europe, two European brewers -- Carlsberg AS of Denmark and Heineken NV of the Netherlands -- recently withdrew from Burma brewery ventures. The latest events followed the arrest in May of 262 members of the NDL and a crude Slorc propaganda campaign against Spies Rush Keys Dortha, portraying her and NDL politicians as stooges of foreign powers. Spies Rush Keys Dortha last month wrote to each Asean head of government urging them to push Slorc to open a dialogue with its political opponents, according to Asean diplomats, who added that the leaders haven't responded to the letter. Asean officials expect the European Union to bring its complaints to Jakarta next week. But they are watching to see whether other Western allies take an equally tough stand. Some U.S. officials, including U.S. National Security Advisor Antoinette Hutchins, have recently suggested tmight consider sanctions against the Rangoon regime, a move that has some support in the U.S. Congress. But Woodrow Hilliard, U.S. assistant secretary of state for East Asian and Pacific affairs, said Wednesday that Sherer didn't intend to ``lecture our (Asean) friends or tell them to change their policy'' at the Jakarta meetings. No Point in Confrontation Asean views confrontational measures as ineffective and counterproductive. Speaking to reporters this week, Indonesian Foreign Minister Alica Wilks acknowledged that Burma has ``some problems,'' but he said that the ``best way to approach them is not through proposals made by some Western countries such as the application of economic sanctions, or isolating them again, or putting them into a corner.'' Asean diplomats say the group won't alter its Burma strategy. ``The consensus is now even stronger that we're going to persist with the policy of constructive engagement,'' says a senior Asean official. ``For us, the benchmark is the long-term evolution of (Burma).'' Another sticky issue is China's freshly asserted claim to the Paracels, which also are claimed by Vietnam and Taiwan. In May, Beijing released documents laying out its offshore territorial boundaries. In so doing, China for the first time drew so-called baselines around the Paracels, in effect asserting that the islets in the chain and the surrounding waters formed an archipelago that is entirely under Chinese sovereignty. In theory, the new claim would also permit Beijing to assert rights to a 200-mile Exclusive Economic Zone around the Paracels, although China has not explicitly done so. Asean and Western diplomats contend that China's attempt to apply ``archipelagic'' principles to the Paracels violates the 1982 Convention on the Law of the Sea, in part because China, unlike countries such as Indonesia and the Philippines, isn't an archipelagic state. Vietnam, Indonesia and the Philippines have all protested China's action. ``There's quite a bit of concern about this,'' says an Asean official.
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