[Tlc] TLC-SEA pact in NY Times

[justinm at ucr.edu]

FYI. Big NY Times story on SEA.
Best,
justin

2007-1121 - New York Times - Southeast Asian Pact Exposes Rifts

http://www.nytimes.com/2007/11/21/world/asia/21asean.ready.html?ref=asia

The New York Times

November 21, 2007
Southeast Asian Pact Exposes Rifts
By WAYNE ARNOLD

SINGAPORE, Nov. 20 — Southeast Asian leaders signed a charter
here on Tuesday that was drafted as a watershed document to
bind the region together in a European-style economic
community, but the pact has instead exposed the sharp
divisions over one of its members, Myanmar.

The Asean charter establishes the group as a legal entity,
creating permanent representation for members at its
secretariat in Jakarta, Indonesia, and committing heads of
state to meetings twice a year. It includes a blueprint for
economic reforms intended to create a European-style trading
bloc by 2015, with free movement of goods, services,
investment and skilled labor. The document also sets timelines
for the elimination of nontariff barriers and other trade
restrictions.

But the president of the Philippines has warned that her
country may not ratify the document if Myanmar does not
institute democratic changes and release the long-detained
opposition leader Daw Aung San Suu Kyi.

The blueprint also falls short of establishing the customs
union many businesses in the region have been hoping for. And
it includes a provision that allows members to opt out of
economic commitments if other members agree.

“The charter they ended up with is very diluted, to a point
where it doesn’t make any new ground,” said Thitinan
Pongsudhirak, director of the Institute of Security and
International Studies in Bangkok. “What we have is the
codification of existing norms.”

It is increasingly clear that Myanmar is a liability to
regional status. On Monday, the United States trade
representative, Susan C. Schwab, warned that the situation in
Myanmar was holding up progress toward a free trade agreement
between the United States and Asean. And President Gloria
Macapagal Arroyo of the Philippines warned that unless Myanmar
committed itself to democratic reforms and released Mrs. Aung
San Suu Kyi, her country’s Congress was unlikely to ratify the
charter, essentially vetoing it.

Pointing to Asean’s track record of lofty targets and
pedestrian achievements, economists and analysts have voiced
skepticism about the group’s ability to follow Europe’s lead
given the widely divergent levels of economic development
among its 10 members — with rich Singapore at one end of the
spectrum and impoverished Laos at the other.

“The disparities are still quite big,” said Chua Hak Bin, an
economist at Citigroup in Singapore. “Don’t even talk about a
single currency. It’s so far away.”

The squabbling over Myanmar only underscored the disparate
levels of political maturity and development that exist
between Asean’s older and newer members.

Asean’s newer members, poor and ruled by autocratic
governments — Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam — empathize with
Myanmar’s ruling junta and oppose efforts to press it to
tolerate political dissent. Analysts said these countries
feared that any stronger action by Asean on Myanmar might set
an unwelcome precedent.

These three nations helped Myanmar block plans by Singapore to
have the United Nations special envoy to Myanmar, Ibrahim
Gambari, deliver a briefing on Wednesday to a meeting that
includes leaders from Asean, China, Japan, South Korea and
India. (Mr. Gambari instead held private talks with Asean
leaders late Tuesday, although China’s prime minister, Wen
Jiabao, reportedly declined to meet with him.)

But Asean’s original members, more developed and relatively
more democratic — Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and the
Philippines among them — now see Myanmar as a diplomatic
embarrassment that needs to be handled through careful
pressure and persuasion. All of Asean’s members agree that
sanctions like those imposed by the United States and Europe
would serve only to isolate Myanmar further and reduce what
little leverage they have over the junta.

The charter resolves to create an Asean human rights body but
has no provisions for enforcing compliance with any human
rights standard.

“They’re more into rhetoric than real action,” said Sinapan
Samydorai, president of the Think Center, a nongovernmental
organization in Singapore. “They can talk about human rights,
but they can’t enforce it.”

Copyright 2007 The New York Times Company

______________
Dr. Justin McDaniel
Dept. of Religious Studies
2617 Humanities Building
University of California, Riverside
Riverside, CA 92521
951-827-4530
justinm at ucr.edu