Uncertainty Surrounds Asean Summit

By WAI MOE

The date and the venue for the 14th summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) are still uncertain after two regional leaders urged hosts Thailand to hold the postponed summit as soon as possible.

Singapore’s Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said on Friday that the postponement of the December 15-18 summit to March was a setback for all Southeast Asian nations and suggested that the Asean Secretariat host the summit at its office in Jakarta.
Cambodian premier Hun Sen backed the call on Monday.

However, the Thai Foreign Ministry responded by saying that Thailand is ready to hold the summit as soon as a new government is formed.

This comes after Thailand’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs announced last week that it had rescheduled the Asean summit from December 15-18 to March 2009 because of the political turmoil in the country.

Thailand currently holds the chairmanship of Asean and the regional bloc’s Secretary-General Surin Pinsuwan is a former Thai foreign minister.

Meanwhile, posters and signs in Thailand’s northern city Chiang Mai announcing the summit and welcoming delegates have yet to be removed, adding to the confusion of whether the summit would go ahead as planned.

Fearing that anti-government protesters would hijack the summit for political objectives, the Thai government previously changed the place of the meeting from Bangkok—where protestors had blocked off access to Government House—to Chiang Mai, stronghold of the ousted People’s Power Party.

After Thailand’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs on December 2 announced the postponement of the summit, regional leaders expressed their concerns.

“With the global financial crisis affecting all countries in Asean, the summit should be rescheduled to the earliest possible date, preferably in January, rather than later in March,” Singapore’s Foreign Ministry said in a statement on Friday.

The city state also suggested Jakarta, as the seat of the Asean Secretariat’s office, as an alternative site for the summit.

Cambodia supported Singapore’s proposal. “We understand Thailand’s difficulties, but Thailand should understand the other nine members of Asean— they should not become hostages of Thailand’s political crisis,” said Hun Sen, the prime minister of Cambodia, on Monday. “So I think the proposal of the Singaporean prime minister is a good way to resolve the problem.”

In response, the Thai Foreign Ministry stated: “The Ministry of Foreign Affairs wishes to reaffirm Thailand’s readiness, as Asean chair, to convene the 14th Asean summit and related summits in Thailand, and its flexibility to convene the summits at the earliest dates as soon as a new government is able to perform fully its duties.”

Asean is a bloc of 10 Southeast Asian Nations—Brunei, Burma, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. Burma’s Asean chairmanship was cancelled in 2006 because of the political crisis in the military-ruled country.

The political turmoil in Thailand has affected exiled Burmese groups in the kingdom. In particular, the Burma Media Association announced it had postponed its annual conference in Thailand to February for security reasons. The conference was scheduled to be held in mid-December.

The political unrest in Thailand appears to be ongoing although the opposition Democrats vowed to form a new coalition government to resolve the crisis in the kingdom after the Thai constitution court ousted Prime Minister Somchai Wongsawat on December 2 by dissolving the ruling People’s Power Party and two alliance parties over election fraud in 2007.

According to the Bangkok Post, Thailand’s leading English daily, the chief of the 3rd army, Lt-Gen Wanathip Wongwaibegan, said on Monday in Chiang Mai that he was concerned about the threat of supporters of former Prime Minister Thakin Shinawatra in northern Thailand.

Soon after the army chief’s warning, unknown assailants armed with M-16 rifles attacked worshippers at a meditation center in the northern province of Chiang Rai. The center was known as a meeting place for supporters of the anti-government People’s Alliance for Democracy (PAD) and as a transmission station for the pro-PAD ASTV in northern Thailand.

During Thailand’s recent political unrest, at least one PAD supporter was killed by government loyalists in Chiang Mai.

In a press release on December 9, Asean announced that its member states’ foreign ministers would gather at the Secretariat on December 15 to celebrate the entry into force of the Asean charter, a meeting previously scheduled for the Thai summit.