Published in the Singapore Straits Times on 30 November 2004 and extracted from this URL.

Australia should sign Asean amity pact
By Michael Richardson

AUSTRALIA and New Zealand could consolidate their ties with South-east Asia today by agreeing to accede to the Association of South-east Asian Nations’ Treaty of Amity and Cooperation (TAC).

Leaders of the two countries will be meeting their South-east Asian counterparts for talks at the Asean summit in Vientiane, Laos, for the first time since 1977.

New Zealand is reportedly willing to join the treaty. But Australia has reservations. It should think again because it is casting itself as the odd country out in the region for no good reason.

Agreed on by Asean heads of government at their first summit in Bali in 1976, the TAC sets out a code of conduct for regional relations. It binds the contracting parties to renounce the use or threat of force except in self-defence, and prescribes a process for settling any dispute peacefully.

All 10 Asean members have adhered to the treaty. Papua New Guinea, which has observer status in Asean and shares a land border with Indonesia, joined in 1989. The treaty was amended in 1987 to allow countries outside the region to accede, and again in 1998, to enable the new members of Asean to consent to such accession.

But Australia’s Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said last week that signing the TAC could undermine Australia’s alliance with the United States and curb Canberra’s ability to criticise human rights abuses in Myanmar and elsewhere. Yet neither of these objections stand up to scrutiny.

China and India joined the treaty in October last year, during the Asean-China summit and the Asean-India summit; Japan and Pakistan followed in the middle of this year. Asean wants all its dialogue partners, including Australia and New Zealand, to accede to the TAC, arguing that this will encourage constructive engagement in political and security matters and thus help reinforce regional peace and stability.

Other key principles of the treaty, which some analysts have referred to as a non-aggression or peaceful coexistence pact, are respect among member states for one another’s sovereignty and territorial integrity, as well as non-interference in one another’s affairs. However, the latter principle has not stopped some Asean countries from criticising developments in other member states that affect the interests and standing of the region, including repression in Myanmar. Australia and New Zealand have been similarly critical.

Adherence to the TAC has not prevented Malaysia, the Philippines and other Asean members from calling for reform in Myanmar. Just last week, Malaysian Foreign Minister Syed Hamid Albar said that military-ruled Myanmar should show ‘tangible’ proof that it is moving towards democracy to reassure an increasingly sceptical and frustrated international community.

He added that if Myanmar did not address the problem, ‘then not only Myanmar is going to be affected, but the credibility and integrity of Asean as a whole is going to be affected’.

The TAC establishes a high council to recommend ways of resolving conflicts among signatories, but only if all the conflicting parties agree to mediation. The council has not been convened since the treaty came into force because Asean member states are unwilling to surrender national sovereignty to a regional dispute-settling body. Nonetheless, the TAC enshrines principles that underpin regional order and it could become a more effective body in future.

Australian Prime Minister John Howard said last Friday that the TAC was ‘not the sort of treaty that we, being a non-Asean country, would sign. We are more interested in the substance of our relationship with the countries of the Asean region’.

However, Australia’s approach to the TAC reflects its approach to South-east Asia because the treaty is a touchstone.

Signing it would be a significant symbolic gesture of support for peace and stability, and show that they accept the approach for maintaining order that countries in the region are comfortable with. This would be another step towards the goal of regional integration.

Following Indonesia’s decision to give Timor Leste the right of self-determination leading to independence, adhering to the TAC would also reinforce the repeated public recognition by Australia and New Zealand of Indonesia’s current territorial integrity and unity.

Of course, if Asean is serious about re-engaging with ANZ, it should make the ANZ-Asean leaders’ summit an annual event, as it does with China, Japan and other key dialogue partners. But Asean should expect in return that Australia and New Zealand would join the TAC or at least give serious consideration to accession before the next Asean summit in Malaysia late next year.

Like Australia, Japan is a long-time ally of the US and consulted Washington before joining the TAC. The fact that Tokyo acceded indicates that the US has no major problem with its allies becoming part of a treaty that does not place any onerous constraints on their freedom of action, including their alliance obligations or their right of self-defence.

South Korea, another Asia-Pacific ally of the US, is also expected to accede to the TAC, along with Russia. Moreover, two Asean members, Thailand and the Philippines, are also long-time allies of the US.

The Australian government has expressed interest in deepening its strategic partnership with Indonesia by developing a more formal bilateral security arrangement or treaty. If this were negotiated in the context of an Australian decision to join the TAC - a step Indonesia has specifically requested - it would make it easier for Jakarta to portray the pact with Canberra as being compatible with its own and the region’s security principles.

– The writer is a visiting senior research fellow at the Institute of South-east Asian Studies in Singapore.

  

Posted on November 30th, 2004 by jl
Filed under: Regionalisation