This AFP report was widely published on 30 November 2004 and was extracted from this URL.

Australian PM under growing ASEAN pressure to sign non-aggression pact

VIENTIANE : Australian Prime Minister John Howard meets Southeast Asian leaders in Laos under growing pressure to sign a non-aggression pact with them to dispel concern about his policy of pre-emptive strikes.

Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) calls for Howard to sign the deal have grown louder ahead of his debut at the 10-nation group’s summit, but he has shrugged them off, insisting he wants to keep the relationship economic.

“We are encouraging Australia and New Zealand to join us to accede to the TAC (Treaty of Amity and Cooperation) which they have not yet done,” Philippine Foreign Minister Alberto Romulo said late Monday.

“We think that it’s high time that Australia gives it serious consideration,” Thai foreign ministry spokesman Sihasak Phunketkeow said.

Australia is coming to the two-day ASEAN summit with its Pacific neighbour New Zealand to open talks on a free trade pact.

But ASEAN, which largely sees Australia as closer to the West than Asia, wants assurances about Australia’s intentions in the region because of Howard’s stated policy that he would launch pre-emptive strikes on foreign targets to avert attacks on his country’s interests.

However accession to the treaty is not a precondition to the free-trade talks, officials have said.

“Given Australia’s much-pronounced statements on how much they feel close to the region, we thought that they would be able to see the positives in this,” Indonesian foreign ministry spokesman Marty Natalegawa said at the weekend.

“The way Indonesia sees it, there can be no more efficient and effective way for Australia to dispel misperceptions some quarters may have of its intentions in Southeast Asia than to simply accede to the TAC,” he said.

The treaty has been signed by seven other countries outside ASEAN, including China — which is on its way to forming the world’s largest free trade zone with ASEAN, covering nearly two billion people.

The pact calls for signatories to commit to “non-interference in the internal affairs of one another”, a “renunciation of the threat or use of force” and the settlement of disputes by “peaceful means”.

Canberra says this would bar it from criticising the domestic policies of ASEAN members, for example Myanmar’s internationally reviled regime.

Howard insisted Monday the TAC issue remained separate from the trade deal.

“They are two separate issues so we shouldn’t confuse the two and that has been made very clear,” he said in Sydney.

Negotiations on the trade deal expected to be announced on Tuesday are scheduled to run for two years, after which Australia and New Zealand would then be formally linked with the ASEAN trade bloc during the 10 years to 2017.

The aim of the agreement is to double trade and investment by 2010. Two-way trade in goods and services between ASEAN and the two countries totalled 34.5 billion US dollars and investments reached 8.4 billion dollars in 2003.

Their combined annual economic output of 1.3 trillion US dollars is nearly as big as that of China’s 1.4 trillion dollars in 2003.

ASEAN includes Brunei, Cambodia, Laos, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.

- AFP

  

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