まゆの部屋

East Asia meet gives warm fuzzies, but function vague
Tetsuya Suetsugu and Hiroshi Oyama / Yomiuri Shimbun Correspondents

The East Asia Summit meeting Wednesday took the first step toward stronger political and economic cooperation in a region of 3 billion people, but failed to clarify a distinct framework for an "East Asian Community" the participating leaders promised to create.

Also left unanswered was how the role of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations plus Three (Japan, China and South Korea) would differ from that of the East Asia Summit.

Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi was upbeat Wednesday about discussions on the matter at future summit meetings.

"The unity of the participants will be more solid if we make our meetings a framework for real cooperation, not just a place for dialogue," he said.

Koizumi said at the summit meeting he expected participants to join forces in the fights against bird flu and terrorism and to resolve disputes over energy sources.

Indian Prime Minister Manmohan Singh also suggested the East Asian nations should make a plan laying out specific measures for cooperation.

Japan considers the East Asia Summit, along with ASEAN plus Three, as an important foundation for creating the envisioned East Asia Community. Consequently, the government was pleased when summit participants clearly stated the meeting would play a vital role in creating the community.

Tokyo was eager to stress the importance of the East Asia Summit, whose participants were ASEAN plus Three and Australia, India and New Zealand, because it fears the smaller ASEAN plus Three framework would give China's growing presence even more weight.

However, China and ASEAN nations insisted ASEAN plus Three should lead discussions concerning the community, drawing a distinction between what they saw as the core community members and Australia, India and New Zealand--nations that do not geographically belong to East Asia.

Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra said ASEAN should play the lead role at the East Asia Summit and continue managing its operations.

The difference between the two frameworks remains ill-defined. Meetings for the two groupings likely will be held separately at the same location--as they were in Kuala Lumpur--from next year.

"The summit framework encompassing nations from a wider region is more effective," a Japanese delegation source said.

On the other hand, a Liberal Democratic Party executive said, "It'll be like putting a fifth wheel on a car."

How the nations want to accomplish regional integration through the envisaged East Asia Community remains murky. Member states simply tried to cover as many issues as possible in the summit declaration, which called for cooperation in politics, security, construction of infrastructure, financial issues, expansion and liberalization of regional trade and investment and eradication of poverty.

Also likely to cause plenty of head-scratching is whether the community should include Russia and the United States. Tokyo is wary that China might try to include Russia, with which it has warming relations, to prevent Japan from leading discussions on the community's creation.

Some Japanese diplomats also fear regional cooperation through the community would be limited to the economic sphere if Japan-China ties remain strained.

(Dec. 16, 2005)