Thai-Cambodia crisis underscores Asean's failings

US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice led calls for restraint over a Thai-Cambodia border dispute and North Korea signed a non-aggression treaty during annual Asian security talks in Singapore.

(AFP/Romeo Gacad)

ASEAN'S failure to come to grips with the brewing Thai-Cambodia border conflict at ministerial talks here has underlined the organisation's inability to take action during a crisis, observers say.

Some 4,000 Thai and Cambodian soldiers are facing off over a small patch of land near the 11th-century Preah Vihear temple, in one of the most dangerous flare-ups of regional tensions in decades.

The dispute erupted just before foreign ministers of the 10-member Association of South-east Asian Nations convened for annual talks ahead of Asia's top security meeting, the Asean Regional Forum, which embraces their 17 partners including China, the United States and Russia.

Asean held crisis talks on the issue, and extracted an assurance that the neighbours would 'exert utmost efforts' to find a peaceful solution.

But Cambodia's request for the bloc to form a 'contact group' to act as an impartial broker was shot down by Thailand which opposes any intervention.

Asean's long-cherished convention of making decisions by consensus and not interfering in members' internal affairs made it impossible to move forward, and instead Cambodia has asked the United Nations Security Council to act.

'The thing is, Asean is not built to intervene in these kinds of disputes except to urge restraint,' said a former secretary-general of the group, Mr Rodolfo Severino.

'Asean has no armed force, it has no powers of coercion. So it's just the moral weight of the association that's being brought to bear,' he said.

Asean took a dim view of Cambodia's decision to go over its head and appeal to the UN, which some saw as an unwelcome internationalisation of the conflict.

'There is a view that this may be a little premature,' Singapore Foreign Minister George Yeo said on Thursday at the close of the Asean Regional Forum, whose members called for 'restraint, a speedy resolution and to maintain the status quo'.

Mr Tim Huxley from the International Institute for Strategic Studies in Singapore said the mild response showed Asean was 'still underdeveloped as a security grouping'.

'For many years Asean has talked about doing more in the security sphere,' he said. 'If it's going to maintain its relevance it's going to have to try a bit harder.'

'The issue has now gone to the UN Security Council and I think it's an illustration of how far South-east Asian countries still have to go in developing a security community.'

The same shortcomings have vexed Asean's attempts to rein in member state Myanmar, which has earned widespread condemnation for its human rights abuses and refusal to shift towards democracy.

Myanmar came to this week's talks in the bad books for extending opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi's house arrest for another year, and refusing to quickly open its doors to a foreign-led relief effort after a catastrophic cyclone in May.

But it escaped with effectively a slap on the wrist. Ministers said after an informal dinner on Sunday that they were 'deeply disappointed' with the action against Ms Aung San Suu Kyi, but in the formal communique the words were omitted.

Mr Huxley said the bloc has set itself lofty standards, including a goal to establish a political and security community by 2015.

But in a grouping that includes authoritarian states, democracies and semi-democracies, a military dictatorship, and an absolute monarchy, that kind of cohesiveness will be difficult to achieve.

Asean Secretary-General Surin Pitsuwan, himself a former Thai foreign minister, defended the bloc's failure to achieve a breakthrough in the crisis with Cambodia.

'I think the entry point has to be very carefully chosen,' he said.

On this issue, intervention would have to wait until 'both sides are more ready and emotions calm down a little bit', he said. -- AFP