ASEAN LEADERS MEET AMID REGIONAL TENSIONS, DIFFERENCES
[PHOTO AT LEFT - President Benigno Aquino 3rd (third from left) joins hands with (left to right) Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak, Myanmar's Prime Minister Gen. Thein Sein, Singaporean Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong, Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva, Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung, Indonesian Coordinating Minister for Economic Affairs Hatta Rajasa, Brunei's Sultan Hassanal Bolkiah, Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen and Laos Prime Minister Bouasone Buphavanh for a group shot during the opening ceremony of the 17th Association of Southeast Asian Nations Summit in Hanoi on Thursday. MALACAñANG PHOTO]
MANILA, OCTOBER 29, 2010 (MANILA TIMES) Southeast Asian leaders held talks in Vietnam's capital on Thursday with their region assailed by currency tensions, territorial disputes and pressure to act on Myanmar's looming elections.
[PHOTO AT LEFT - Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung addresses the opening ceremony of the 17th ASEAN (Association of Southeast Asian Nations) Summit in Hanoi, capital of Vietnam, Oct. 28, 2010. The ASEAN Summit opened in Hanoi on Thursday to discuss the building of the ASEAN Community and other related topics.[Xinhua photo]
The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) Summit in Hanoi has once again been overshadowed by pariah member Myanmar, which is preparing to hold polls on November 7 that have been derided as a sham.
Faced with a barrage of complaints that the vote will not be credible unless detained opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi and other opponents are freed, Myanmar's Foreign Minister Nyan Win has sought to reassure the region.
"He said that they will release Aung San Suu Kyi maybe after the elections," said an official from an Asean delegation, who attended a dinner on Wednesday where the bloc's foreign ministers tackled the issue.
But Nyan Win "did not say specifically" what date Suu Kyi—who has been in detention for 15 of the last 21 years—would be freed from house arrest, the source told Agence France-Presse.
Authorities in Myanmar have previously told Agence France-Presse that the democracy icon will be released when her current term of house arrest expires on November 13 but the military state has made no official confirmation.
The polls are the country's first in two decades but have been discredited by the exclusion of Aung San Suu Kyi, whose party humiliated the junta by inflicting a crushing defeat in the disallowed 1990 polls.
Indonesian Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa, who has said the vote was suffering from a "credibility deficit," also on Thursday said that the region was anticipating an imminent release.
"Our understanding is that once the present term of her sentence has expired, once she has served her sentence, then that would be it. And that notion was not disputed," he added.
"That was the understanding that we presented [to Nyan Win] and we did not hear any disputing of that understanding," Natalegawa said.
United Nations chief Ban Ki-moon, who is due to meet with the Asean leaders on Friday, has expressed his growing "frustration" with the Myanmar junta in recent weeks.
Ban has called on the countries in the region to be more aggressive with their pariah neighbor or risk tarnishing their own democratic credentials.
Aquino, Abhisit meet
Prior to the formal opening of the 17th Asean Summit, President Benigno Aquino 3rd met with Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva.
In a Malacañang statement, Foreign Affairs Secretary Alberto Romulo said that President Aquino and Abhisit discussed increasing trade and close ties between Manila and Bangkok by undertaking joint investment programs in the automotive and energy sectors.
"That's why we are going to have a joint committee meeting sometime this year precisely to look at all those areas where the trade and investment would be encouraged from the Philippines, Thailand and Asean sides," Romulo added.
Secretary Ricky Carandang, who was also present at the meeting, said that the President and Abhisit also sought to strengthen their local currencies.
Carandang added that the two leaders agreed that "central bankers and finance ministers" from both countries and the Asean should meet more frequently to come up with common positions on how to deal with their strengthening local currencies.
"We all recognize and the President pointed out that our currencies are strong because of the weakness of the US dollar. So, to some extent, these are global factors affecting currencies, but nevertheless the two leaders agreed that there should be more frequent contact between central bankers and finance ministers of the two countries and Asean so we can coordinate more closely our actions because of the strong currencies that we are seeing right now which could have an impact on exports," he said.
Carandang said that the President and the Thai premier also discussed disaster risk reduction and management.
He added that the two also agreed that Myanmar should "move more rapidly on its roadmap to democracy."
In a separate statement, Mr. Aquino said that he expects the Asean to come up with more "concrete steps" in dealing with the problems of the region at the conclusion of the Asean Summit on October 30.
"As we can gather from this year's Asean theme, 'Toward the Asean Community: From Vision to Action,' there are so many problems that affect the entire region like global warming and the issue of piracy. So many issues that really affect not only one state but in effect the entire state," the President said in the statement.
"Even the growth of our economy is so dependent on acting in unison and in concert with those who are our closest neighbors so we expect that there will be more concrete steps toward harmonizing and really unifying the entire Asean region to act as one in addressing the problems that we all face," he added.
Wider talks
The gathering of the 10-member Asean bloc shifts gear on Saturday when it widens into the 16-nation East Asia Summit, also taking in Australia, China, India, Japan, South Korea and New Zealand.
Talks mooted between Chinese premier Wen Jiabao and his Japanese counterpart Naoto Kan are in doubt after the two nations became embroiled in their worst diplomatic row in years, centered on a disputed East China Sea island chain.
A meeting scheduled for Friday between the economic ministers of Japan, China and South Korea has been cancelled, casting further doubt on the two-way talks between Asia's biggest powers.
A Japanese trade ministry official blamed the cancellation on scheduling problems but Kyodo news, citing government sources, said that China axed the talks because of a spat over its export restrictions on rare earth minerals.
In a parallel issue, the United States and Southeast Asian countries are concerned over China's increasingly aggressive approach to maritime sovereignty in the South China Sea, where several nations have competing territorial claims.
"We must ensure that this does not become an issue that is going to burden Asean, that creates the impression as if our region is afflicted by tensions, by competitions," Natalegawa said on Wednesday.
The summit is also expected to sound the alarm over the "currency war" that has sent exchange rates and share prices rocketing in the region's emerging economies.
While China has kept a tight grip on the yuan, Japan and emerging Asian economies have seen their currencies soar against the US dollar, making their exports less competitive and inviting a massive inflow of foreign capital.
"These issues need to be discussed in the context of Asean and Asean+6, where member countries could fashion a common approach to these regional challenges," the World Bank said in a recent report.
But coming up with a regional response at the summit could prove challenging.
Asean groups Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. AFP WITH REPORT FROM CRIS G. ODRONIA
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