Ghosts of past to haunt Asean meeting
HANOI - Ghosts of conflicts past are expected to
dominate a meeting of an influential Asian bloc in
Vietnam.
Foreign ministers of the 10-member Association of
Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) were to conclude their
annual summit in Hanoi yesterday and then hold talks
with non-members China, South Korea and Japan.
Discussions will today be broadened to include partners
from the 23-member Asean Regional Forum, which
includes the United States and the European Union.
Contemporary security worries range from the last Cold
War frontier in Korea, to multination territorial disputes in
the South China Sea, to US President George W. Bush's
proposed missile defence system.
But ghosts of the past have proven remarkably resilient
and are expected to feature in meetings between China
and Japan and South Korea and later between Vietnam
and the US.
All eyes will be on US Secretary of State Colin Powell,
when he makes his first return visit to Vietnam since his
wartime service.
Powell told a briefing in Washington last Friday that he
expected a flood of emotions to hit him on his return to
Vietnam, 32 years after he left, but said there were "no
ghosts within him that needed exorcism".
But questions remain over Powell's Vietnam record
stemming from his service in the brigade that carried out
the worst US massacre of the war.
The killing of 504 people, mostly women and children, at
the hamlet of My Lai on March 16, 1968, took place 10
weeks before Powell began his second tour of duty and
he said in his autobiography he did not learn of it until
more than a year later.
But Powell has been accused of failing to properly
investigate a report prompted by the incident describing
routine acts of murder and torture of civilians by US
soldiers.
Talks between the foreign ministers of China and South
Korea and Japan will be dominated by the ghosts of an
even more distant war.
Both Beijing and Seoul have been incensed by a new
Japanese school textbook which critics say glosses over
Japan's aggression in the Second World War.
Reuters - July 25, 2001.
Ministers Meet to Calm Simmering Asia Tensions
HANOI - Asian foreign ministers and the major global powers met
on Wednesday for annual security talks aimed at preventing future conflicts
and exorcising the ghosts of decades of mutual mistrust and antagonism.
But arguments over wars long past still haunted the meeting, and participants
said there was concern among some countries that their forum was all talk and
no action.
The one-day meeting of the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), Asia's key security grouping, brought
together foreign ministers from the 10 countries of the Association of South East Asian Nations
(ASEAN) with major powers like the United States, Russia, China, Japan and the European Union.
Participants said discussions focused on this week's dramatic change of leadership in Indonesia, tension
on the Korean peninsula, often thorny U.S.-China ties and East Timor .
In his closing statement to the meeting, conference chairman Nguyen Dy Nien, the foreign minister of
host Vietnam, said the ministers had noticed ``positive signs for peace and stability'' in the relationship
between the major powers as well as on the Korean peninsula, in the South China Sea and the South
Pacific.
Cautious approach underlined
But underlining the caution critics say prevents the ARF from becoming more effective, ministers
managed to agree only on the ``concept'' of preventive diplomacy. Nien said they stressed
``confidence building'' should remain the main thrust of the ARF.
He also said participants had emphasized decision-making based on consensus and non-interference in
internal affairs, mantras blamed for the politically and economically diverse ASEAN's inability to act
decisively in the face of crises.
Nien said the meeting had reached a ``high consensus'' on the need to agree a code of conduct on the
South China Sea, where China has rival territorial claims with Vietnam and several ASEAN countries
to the reputedly oil rich Spratly Islands.
But he added that there were a number of unresolved issues that required further talks among ASEAN
members.
Secretary of State Colin Powell, returning to Vietnam for the first time since fighting
the communists as a soldier in the 1960s, reported progress in the case of U.S.-based scholars jailed in
China after talks with his Chinese counterpart Tang Jiaxuan.
He hinted strongly that at least one would be released in the next 24 hours or so.
According to a Japanese official, there appeared to be little progress on North Korea (news - web
sites), with North Korea's representative, ambassador at large Ho Jong telling the meeting the new
U.S. administration was taking a ``hard-line stance'' toward Pyongyang.
``We cannot hope for any progress in talks to which the United States is attaching various conditions,''
he quoted Ho as saying.
According to the Japanese official, Powell said Washington had no intention of attaching preconditions
to comprehensive new talks it is seeking and welcomed suggestions from North Korea as to the timing
and venue for bilateral discussions.
Last week, hopes for a resumption of high-level dialogue between North Korea and the United States
on the sidelines of the ARF were dashed when Pyongyang said its foreign
minister was unable to come because he was ``too busy.''
A senior U.S. official said on Tuesday it was possible the Americans would
meet briefly with the North Koreans but did not expect to hold talks. South
Korea (news - web sites) has urged China to help restart the tentative
reconciliation process on the Korean peninsula.
Australian Foreign Minister Alexander Downer said there was a view that U.S.-China ties were
``moving in the right direction'' despite difficulties seen in the past year. He said there was hope the
change in Indonesia's president would bring more stability.
Powell was also due to raise human rights, including the detention of several religious leaders, in
bilateral discussion with Vietnam's Nien in the evening from which no details emerged.
Clearly curious about the communist capital he never saw during the Vietnam War, Powell broke away
from his official schedule in the afternoon to stage an impromptu walkabout around a lake near his
hotel, drawing curious crowds of onlookers.
Dancing elephants
Thai Foreign Minister Surakiart Sathirathai said Asia as a whole was encouraged to see U.S.-China
ties improving.
``When two elephants dance we will all be affected,'' he said.
Sparks flew again in bilateral meetings between China and Japan over trade, a new textbook critics say
glosses over Japan's wartime brutality, and Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi's plan to visit a
controversial war shrine.
South Korean Foreign Minister Han Seung-soo said that Koizumi should renounce an ``aggressors'
position'' and drop the shrine visit.
In talks with Japanese Foreign Minister Makiko Tanaka, Han also repeated Seoul's demand for major
changes to the textbook.
``We want the prime minister to take the position of the victims, renounce the aggressors' position and
respond wisely and carefully,'' a Japanese official quoted Han as telling Tanaka.
Downer said he was encouraged by the frankness of discussions but that the ARF needed to evolve
into more than a talking shop.
``Is it just going to be a place where people talk or will it be able to develop...a preventive diplomacy
role?'' he said.
``ASEAN ministers will say to you quite frankly: 'We're all talk, no action'. That is a real concern
among them. Are they going to do anything about it? At least they're reached a point where they're
very conscious that this is a problem.''
By David Brunnstrom - Reuters - July 25, 2001.
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