East Asia summit misses the point

boy in blues SG

http://financialexpress-bd.com/index3.asp?cnd=12/9/2005&section_id=4&newsid=9343&spcl=no

East Asia summit misses the point, Mahathir

12/9/2005

FORMER Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad pronounced scathing judgment last Wednesday on his own brainchild, the first East Asian summit.

Mahathir, who first pushed for a summit of East Asian leaders 14 years ago, called a news conference to say he felt the summit to be held in the Malaysian capital next week was misnamed.

"We are not going to have an East Asian summit. We are going to have an East Asia-Australasia summit," Mahathir said, adding that "the inclusion of Australia and New Zealand into the fold had subverted the development of a genuinely Asian forum.

"Now Australia is basically European and it has made clear to the rest of the world it is the deputy sheriff to America and therefore, Australia's view would represent not the East but the views reflecting the stand of America."

Mahathir pushed his idea for an East Asia Economic Grouping in 1991, as global trade talks were bogging down. Washington opposed the idea, fearing it could lead to a trade bloc that would rival the European Union (EU) and North America, which was then consolidating into the North American Free Trade Area (NAFTA).

Instead, a much wider grouping of Asian and Western powers, the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, was born. Mahathir boycotted the first APEC meeting in Seattle in 1993, but his idea has eventually led, a decade later, to an East Asian summit.

The summit, on Dec. 14, will involve leaders from the 10 member states of the Association of South East Asian Nations plus China, Japan, South Korea, India, Australia and New Zealand.

With faltering global trade talks again providing the backdrop, the original idea of an Asian free-trade bloc may well come back on the agenda after this summit, diplomats said.

AP adds from Kuala Lumpur: Mahathir Mohamad, who had conceived of an East Asian caucus as a way to counter U.S. influence in the region, appeared bitter that his vision has been corrupted with the entry of Australia and New Zealand, two culturally European nations that are close allies of Washington.

He predicted that the East Asia Summit in Kuala Lumpur on December 14 will not find a common voice on anything because of the two Pacific nations' presence, as well as Japan's pro-U.S. policies.

"I am not very optimistic because East Asian countries tend to yield to strong pressures, which makes the whole grouping quite useless," he said.

Mahathir, who stepped down in October 2003 after 22 years in power, said the new grouping no longer honours his vision of "a consultative group where people of East Asia can sit around the table and take a common stand on WTO and globalization."

"I have always opposed the idea of Australia and New Zealand being in the group simply because Australia and New Zealand are not really East nor are they Asian," Mahathir said.

"I am afraid that knowing Asians -- who are always very polite and do not like to appear to be recalcitrant -- the views of Australia are likely to dominate this East Asian-Australasian grouping," he said.

This comment showed that he has not forgotten the description by Australia's then-Prime Minister Paul Keating of Mahathir as recalcitrant in 1993. Keating's remark plunged Malaysia-Australia relations to an all-time low and led to Mahathir's visceral dislike for Australia.

Mahathir also warned that Japan might be U.S. spokesman in the East Asia Summit. "We cannot take Japan's stand as being East Asian. It is likely to reflect Japan's very strong relations with the United States," he said.

Mahathir said India's participation was fine because it is Asian.

AFP adds: Wednesday, diplomats from the 10 countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or ASEAN, opened talks in Malaysia's main city, Kuala Lumpur, to discuss regional cooperation and threats of terrorism and bird flu in preparation for a meeting of their leaders next Monday.

They also discussed the role of ASEAN in the East Asian Summit to be held on the last day of the gathering, December 14, when ASEAN government heads join counterparts from China, India, Japan, South Korea, Australia and New Zealand.

That grouping accounts for about 3.0 billion people, or half the world's population, and a fifth of global trade, but the goal of the meeting remains unclear. Some countries, led by India, want the summit to result in firm moves toward an East Asia Community, along the lines of the European Union, followed by the world's biggest free trade area.

However, some Southeast Asian countries and China fear that implementing the grand vision of an East Asia community could overshadow ASEAN. Also, Beijing is reluctant to share the top billing with economic rival India in any mega Asian club.

The differences have delayed the drafting of a final summit declaration.
"The senior officials are in the final stages of working on the Kuala Lumpur declaration on the East Asia Summit," ASEAN spokesman M.C. Abad told reporters. But they will leave it to leaders to map out the future direction, he said.

"This declaration will convey a message of ASEAN's centrality in the process and at the same time, recognise the role of countries participating in the East Asia Summit in the community building efforts in the region," he said.

If India and others have their way, such a community would go beyond simply easing the flow of goods as stressed in the region's free-trade agreements, moving to liberalise investment, export of services and the movement of people.

Some Asian countries have even proposed an eventual common currency, as Europe has instituted.

But ASEAN members caution against haste.

"The process has just begun, and we don't know yet whether it will lead to or contribute towards East Asian community building," said Indonesian Foreign Ministry spokesman Marty Natalegawa.

Founded in 1967 as a bulwark against communism, ASEAN -- comprising Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam - has little to show in terms of political clout even though it holds about 300 meetings a year.

Its biggest failure has been on Myanmar, whose military junta has maintained an iron grip on the country and kept pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi under house arrest despite frustrated pleas by its neighbours to democratise.
Myanmar's politics won't be discussed in formal conference sessions. On the agenda, however, are developments on the Korean peninsula, terrorism, maritime security and the threat of bird flu.

Salman SG

Mahathir is nuts and it seems nobody is buying his crap this time.

boy in blues SG

http://www.taipeitimes.com/News/editorials/archives/2005/12/15/2003284536

Riots reveal the myth of Australia's ethnic harmony

DPA , SYDNEY
Thursday, Dec 15, 2005,Page 9

Jim Saleam, the head of the ultra-right Australia First party, is positively gleeful at weekend violence that saw a mob of drunken white youths pick on ethnic Arabs and try and drive them out of a swish Sydney beachside suburb.

"This civil uprising, which may well continue for some time, has actually gone a long way to bury the concept of multiculturalism," Saleam said.

He blames the replacement of a whites-only immigration policy 30 years ago with the color-blind one that rules today for racial tension that bubbled to a head on Cronulla beach on Sunday and sparked reprisal attacks 24 hours later.

But for most people it's not the concept of multiculturalism that is being questioned but its application.

"The violence of last weekend was not evidence of the breakdown of multiculturalism but, rather, its absence," said Gerard Henderson, the head of an independent think tank called the Sydney Institute.

Multiculturalism is the doctrine that immigrants can keep their languages, customs and religions so long as they obey the law and identify as Australians. It's a policy embraced by all political parties.

In the view of some, the shock troops of multiculturalism were none other than the Lebanese-origin youths who were booted out of Cronulla on Sunday and returned there the following night to reclaim their birthright to walk any beach in Australia.

Cronulla is an aberration in modern day Australia, where a quarter of the 20 million population were born elsewhere. In the suburb, more than nine out of 10 of its residents are from Anglo-Saxon stock.

In nearby Lakemba, a suburb that Saleam and his fellow-thinkers describe as a Muslim ghetto, is in fact a place where three-quarters of the residents are not Muslims and a quarter speak English at home.

Few share Saleam's opinion that Australia will go the way of France and that rioting will rumble on through a long hot summer month. The prediction is that tit-for-tat attacks will go on, arrests will be made and an uneasy truce will settle on a turf war between suburbs that are only a half-hour drive apart.

Cronulla, anyway, is up for change: Other eastern beach suburbs have been taken over by rich professionals and the "locals" have been pushed out by price rises.

The shocking scenes at Cronulla have shaken an Australia that has prided itself on settling 6 million settlers from 150 countries since large-scale immigration began in 1947.

flashbacks

It has sparked flashbacks to 1996 when right-wing rabblerouser Pauline Hanson swept into the federal parliament on a stop-Asian-immigration platform. Hanson, who went on to win 11 percent of the vote in a Queensland state election, has since left politics. Significantly, the last election Hanson fought was as a resident of Southerland Shire, the municipality that contains Cronulla.

The images of beer-brave youths that flashed around the world were incontrovertibly of racist thugs. Attesting to that were T-shirts emblazoned with slogans like "Ethnic Cleansing Unit" and "Fuck off Lebs."

"That was the ugliest manifestation of racism we have seen so far in this country," said Keysar Trad, head of the Islamic Friendship Association of Australia.

"Nobody wants to see this violence in Australia. Nobody from the Middle East, nobody from the Anglo community. It's something that's most unfortunate and should never have happened," he said.

But happen it did, prompting a flood of recriminations and a sea of opinions on why it happened.

There is fault on both sides. Alcohol helped fuel white hatred of dark-skinned people that was expressed in mindful violence. The retaliation from ethnic Arabs was cold and calculated and in direct defiance of Trad and other community leaders.

boy in blues SG

"We are not going to have an East Asian summit. We are going to have an East Asia-Australasia summit," Mahathir said, adding that "the inclusion of Australia and New Zealand into the fold had subverted the development of a genuinely Asian forum.

"Now Australia is basically European and it has made clear to the rest of the world it is the deputy sheriff to America and therefore, Australia's view would represent not the East but the views reflecting the stand of America."

AP adds from Kuala Lumpur: Mahathir Mohamad, who had conceived of an East Asian caucus as a way to counter U.S. influence in the region, appeared bitter that his vision has been corrupted with the entry of Australia and New Zealand, two culturally European nations that are close allies of Washington.

He predicted that the East Asia Summit in Kuala Lumpur on December 14 will not find a common voice on anything because of the two Pacific nations' presence, as well as Japan's pro-U.S. policies.

"I am not very optimistic because East Asian countries tend to yield to strong pressures, which makes the whole grouping quite useless," he said.

Mahathir, who stepped down in October 2003 after 22 years in power, said the new grouping no longer honours his vision of "a consultative group where people of East Asia can sit around the table and take a common stand on WTO and globalization."

"I have always opposed the idea of Australia and New Zealand being in the group simply because Australia and New Zealand are not really East nor are they Asian," Mahathir said.

vito_corleone SG

mahatir's just like iran's ahmedinejad...full of BS. Laughing

Salman SG

Notice that none of the summit leaders responded to Mahathir's rant, not even Abdullah Badawi.
Mahathir himself can't even bring up the logic of his rant openly.

robertteh SG

Mahathir is anti-progress. He may be too nationalistic, inward-looking and xenophobic for progress.

He should relax, and open up like China's Hu JinTao and Wen JiaBao so as to give his people a bigger exposure to catch up with the rest of the world.

BillyBong SG

An indicator should be designed to measure the cost of hosting and participating in these so-called summits vs the subsequent gains and benefits per nation.

That could justify if there was any advantage into sending a delegation to attend such a publicized event if there were zero outcomes but pure rhetoric.

Salman SG

The leaders are all for it, who are you to say its no good?
Come to think of it, Mahathir like it too, just that he's don't like white people.
Will rhetoric then be good w/o white people?

THE ANALYST SG

Though Mahathir might not be correct and right all the time, I have to state that he has a point that Australia are not Asian and are in fact Western in their style and culture. After all the majority of them have roots and originated from Britain.

Of course this does not mean they should definitely be excluded from the East Asia forum. I feel the best way to decide if Australia should be part of the forum is for the East Asia Summit members themselves to hold a meeting on the issue and reach a consensus if the Aussies should be part of the Summit or not. That could be one way to decide on this issue.

robertteh SG

White men do practise economic or political blocs and power groupings to gain economic and political benefits or ascendancy for themselves.

So it is not quite fair to Asians themselves to include whites in any East-Asian summit because of conflicts or potential conflicts as the whites within such grouping might owe race or other allegiance to other white blocs thereby undermining meaning devolution of the Asians.

History has shown that the whites are quite likely to group themselves in order to enjoy their superiority in many areas or dominate the world stage. This fact was clearly established by authors like Alvin Toffler in his book "The Third Wave". So mankind will have to face the fact no matter how altruistic the white will share affinity among themselves and for this reason along the white blocs should stay within their own groupings and Asians within Asian related blocs.

If there is another regional bloc by some other affinities, not bearing the name Asian or East Asian, then Australians and Newzealanders are welcome to join such grouping.

Salman SG

This East Asian summit is an ASEAN initiative. The reason why Australia and NZ was included was because ASEAN do not want the summit to be dominated by China. Australia and NZ was obviously used by ASEAN as a counter to China.
Anyway, I don't think they should be discriminated just because of skin colour or culture. That would be racism.

boy in blues SG

agreed.......
Mahathir pushed his idea for an East Asia Economic Grouping in 1991, as global trade talks were bogging down. Washington opposed the idea, fearing it could lead to a trade bloc that would rival the European Union (EU) and North America, which was then consolidating into the North American Free Trade Area (NAFTA).

Instead, a much wider grouping of Asian and Western powers, the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, was born. Mahathir boycotted the first APEC meeting in Seattle in 1993, but his idea has eventually led, a decade later, to an East Asian summit.

http://financialexpress-bd.com/index3.asp?cnd=12/9/2005&section_id=4&newsid=9343&spcl=no

Salman SG

thank goodness this summit did not turn into a racist group like mahathir would. AB must be given due credit for that.