BRUNEI VIEWS ON ASEAN CHARTER, REGIONAL

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 04 BANDAR SERI BEGAWAN 000064 SIPDIS SIPDIS E.O. 12958: DECL: 02/15/2026 TAGS: PREL ECIN XE BX SUBJECT: BRUNEI VIEWS ON ASEAN CHARTER, REGIONAL ARCHITECTURE REF: A. (A) BEIJING 571 ¶B. (B) BANGKOK 505 ¶C. (C) HANOI 128 ¶D. (D) MANILA 242 ¶E. (E) MANILA 179 ¶F. (F) SINGAPORE 156 ¶G. (G) VIENTIANE 52 ¶H. (H) TOKYO 448 ¶I. (I) PHNOM PENH 191 Classified By: Ambassador Emil Skodon for reasons 1.5 (B,D) -------------- SUMMARY -------------- ¶1. (C) The Government of Brunei (GOB) views the progress made toward an ASEAN Charter as the most important outcome of the Cebu ASEAN Summit, since it believes further ASEAN integration is necessary for Southeast Asia to keep pace with the growing influence of China and India. The Brunieans see such integration as an evolutionary process that will take decades, and accept that there will have to be compromises on some of the more visionary proposals for the ASEAN Charter. They expect, for example, that the final draft of the Charter will finesse the contentious idea of establishing a Southeast Asian "Union" and instead will focus on measures for further developing the three ASEAN "Communities" covering Economic, Socio-Cultural, and Security issues; they also see proposals for expelling members who violate ASEAN decisions to be dropped in favor of provisions for temporary suspension of membership. Regarding regional architecture, the GOB is still working out its thinking about the different roles to be filled by overlapping regional organizations, such as the East Asia Summit (EAS) and ASEAN 3. The Bruneians tell us that ASEAN is eagerly awaiting USG proposals for commemorating the 30th anniversary of the U.S.-ASEAN Dialogue Partnership later this year. End Summary. -------------- FOCUS ON THE ASEAN CHARTER -------------- ¶2. (SBU) Ambassador met with Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Trade (MFAT) Deputy Permanent Secretary for ASEAN Datin Masrainah for a readout of the 12th ASEAN Summit in Cebu, Philippines. Three members of her staff who had been at Cebu were also present. Masrainah said the GOB considered this to have been a very significant summit for ASEAN because of the leaders' decision to move forward with the drafting of an ASEAN Charter on the basis of recommendations made by the Eminent Persons Group (EPG). In the GOB view, adoption of a charter that would transform the Association into a rules-based organization and provide it with a "legal identity" was a prerequisite for further ASEAN integration, and a necessary step if ASEAN hoped to be an effective player in East Asia. ¶3. (C) According to Masrainah, the GOB viewed the Charter as just one, albeit extremely important, step in the long-term process of ASEAN integration. It believed ASEAN should first focus on establishing a true economic community. A deeper quasi-political Union along the lines of what the EU is trying to create was something for ASEAN to shoot for perhaps 20-40 years down the road. In Masrainah's view, the Charter should be understood as a "living document" that could be amended and built upon as the step-by-step process of integration proceeds. Because the GOB took this long-term view, it was willing to compromise now on some of the more far-reaching goals the EPG had set out for the draft Charter, even though it generally supported the EPG recommendations (many of which are closely identified with her boss, EPG member and Minister of Foreign Affairs II Lim Jock Seng). -------------- DELAYING A "UNION," BUILDING "COMMUNITIES" -------------- ¶4. (C) Masrainah agreed that completing a draft Charter in time for the leaders to give their approval by the 13th ASEAN Summit in Singapore in November was a daunting task. Nevertheless, she was confident that the High Level Task Force (HLTF) formed to complete the drafting would make the deadline, because "our leaders told us we have to," many difficult issues had already been worked out in the EPG, and compromises on others were already taking shape. She suspected the Indonesian and Philippine representatives on the HLTF, and possibly others, already had first drafts of a Charter in their pockets ready to be presented. (MFAT Permanent Secretary I Pengiran Dato Osman will represent the GOB on the HLTF.) BANDAR SER 00000064 002 OF 004 ¶5. (C) Turning to specific potential compromises, Masrainah explained that while some ASEAN members favored reference to a Southeast Asian "Union," others, such as Indonesia, believed use of that term to be a step too far. That gap could be bridged in the Charter by referring to a "Union" of Southeast Asian Nations as a long-term aspiration to be achieved at some vaguely defined future date. The Charter could thus sidestep specifics of how and when such a Union should be established and instead focus on measures to advance ASEAN's three "communities:" the Economic, Socio-Cultural, and Security Communities. ¶6. (C) As for replacement of the consensus mechanism with majority voting, Masrainah acknowledged there was a gap between ASEAN members who did not want to be held back by a blocking minority and others who were wary of subsuming their self-defined national interests to majority opinion. She pointed out, however, that ASEAN already had a process for building its Economic Community based on less than full unanimity: the "Ten-Minus-X" and "Two-Plus-X" formulas allowed ASEAN members to opt out of programs they were not ready to implement, while ensuring that no two or more countries that wished to pursue economic or trade initiatives would be held back. This approach had worked well, and having the Charter explicitly extend it to the ASEAN Socio-Cultural Community, which tackled health and other transnational issue, should be relatively uncontroversial. Political and security issues were probably too sensitive to touch immediately, however, and so ASEAN's Security Community would have to be preserved as an area where consensus still applied for the time being. -------------- EXPULSION AND BURMA -------------- ¶7. (C) Masrainah also outlined a potential solution to the vexing question of whether to establish a process for expelling members that failed to conform to ASEAN decisions. The GOB recognized that a rules-based organization needed a way to enforce its rules, but believed that expulsion was not a constructive approach to dealing with recalcitrant ASEAN states (read:Burma). One alternative might be for the HLTF to recommend that ASEAN emulate the Commonwealth, and create the potential for "suspending" members if they were in breach of certain minimum criteria, with reinstatement of full membership based on attainment of defined benchmarks. (Comment: The MFAT is frustrated with Burma but leery about coming down hard on Rangoon or moving too far away from the ASEAN principle of non-interference in internal affairs, for fear of opening the door to critical scrutiny of Brunei's own far-from-democratic system of governance. End Comment.) ¶8. (C) In a separate, later conversation between Ambassador and MFAT Permanent Secretary II Dato Shofry, Shofry said bluntly that ASEAN would not be able to deal effectively with Burma until it became a rules-based organization with a defined process for dealing with members who defied ASEAN decisions, through suspension or some other means. He said the Burmese regime currently "knew exactly what it wanted, and was getting it," meaning that economic and security cooperation with China, and sometimes Thailand, was all that really mattered in Rangoon; empty ASEAN declarations meant nothing to the generals. Shofry did not think that a threat of ASEAN rules-based sanctions would ever mean anything to Than Shwe, but he saw some hope that the next generation of regime leaders would be more concerned about maintaining good relations with ASEAN, and the specter of suspension from the Association might serve as meaningful leverage to affect their behavior. -------------- ASEAN COOPERATION ON CT AND ENVIRONMENT -------------- ¶9. (C) One of the MFAT officers who represented the GOB at drafting sessions of the Cebu Counterrorism Declaration attended Ambassador's meeting with Masrainah, and said it had not been easy to reach consensus on the final language. There was a fair amount of give-and-take, as some countries were determined to avoid any declaration that would infringe on what they considered to be internal affairs. In the end, the drafters had inserted language limiting cooperation to measures "in conformity with the domestic laws of the respective parties" and similar restrictions, and settled on a political declaration that did little more than codify previous statements. The GOB would now look to an ASEAN Working Group of security officials to come up with concrete CT follow-up measures in areas such as info-sharing. (Comment: In a separate conversation, the Head of the BANDAR SER 00000064 003 OF 004 Internal Security Department, the GOB internal service, told Ambassador that his organization had not been consulted about the CT Declaration and was not sure what practical implications, if any, it might have. End Comment.) ¶10. (SBU) Masrainah and her colleagues singled out the environmental declaration at the Cebu Summit as another important outcome of the Summit. Although it too had been short on details, they hoped it would give impetus to work on a leader's declaration on environmental sustainability for the November 2007 ASEAN summit, which would address practical measures for alleviating the environmental problems faced by ASEAN. -------------- -------------- REGIONAL ARCHITECTURE -- STILL A WORK IN PROGRESS -------------- -------------- ¶11. (C) Masrainah said it was clear to participants at Cebu that the Chinese were deemphasizing the East Asia Summit in favor of the ASEAN-plus-3. At the EAS, China left the field to the Indians and Japanese. Those two countries were quite active in the EAS, as evidenced for example by the Japanese presentation of a 4-point plan for energy cooperation. At the ASEAN 3 meeting, on the other hand, China was much more eager to take the lead. ¶12. (C) Commenting that there might soon be a need for a non-proliferation regime to limit East Asia institutions, Ambassador noted the USG desire to better understand how the multiple pieces of regional architecture could fit together. Masrainah admitted there was still uncertainty about how they would complement each other. The GOB once thought the EAS could become the core of an eventual East Asia community, but now accepted that this role would stay with ASEAN 3. Masrainah said the GOB's current thinking was that the EAS would be more of a leader-driven strategic forum to discuss its five agreed priority areas (Energy, Education, Avian Flu, Finance, and Natural Disaster Mitigation),while ASEAN 3 would be increasingly oriented toward practical projects that helped build an East Asia community. ¶13. (C) In reply to Ambassador's comment about the continuing importance of APEC, Masrainah acknowledged the value of APEC for addressing economic issues and agreed there needed to be more coordination of work on topics like avian flu that were being addressed simultaneously in a number of regional bodies. (COMMENT: Masrainah's relative lack of attention to APEC is due to bureaucratic reasons and does not reflect the GOB policy position. Responsibility for APEC within MFAT falls to the Multilateral Economics Department, which has a separate reporting chain to the Mnister than the political departments, such as that headed by Masrainah. MFAT and GOB leadership have a keen appreciation for the value of APEC and the ARF as regional organizations which tie the USG directly into East Asian multilateral institutions. END COMMENT.) -------------- 30TH ANNIVERSARY OF U.S.-ASEAN DIALOGUE -------------- ¶14. (C) Masrainah made a strong pitch for a meaningful commemoration of the Thirtieth Anniversary of the USG's dialog partnership with ASEAN later in 2007. The GOB was eagerly looking forward to specific USG ideas on commemorative events, including a special U.S.-ASEAN Summit. Ambassador replied that specific initiatives to mark the anniversary were already under consideration in Washington. He suggested that the anniversary initiatives that might have the most long-lasting impact would be projects that successfully delivered long-term concrete results under the ASEAN-U.S. Enhanced Partnership, such as the ongoing Brunei-U.S. Joint Project to rebuild Aceh villages devastated by the 2005 tsunami. -------------- COMMENT: ASEAN MAKES HASTE, SLOWLY -------------- ¶15. (C) In the Charter negotiations, the ever-conciliatory Bruneian MFAT will seek middle ground between ASEAN members like Singapore who want an ambitious Charter and others like Laos and Cambodia who are comfortable with the status quo. GOB leadership has been signaling its support for this evolutionary approach to ASEAN integration. According to the Laotian Ambassador here, during the recent visit of Lao PM Bouasone the Sultan agreed with Bouasone that ASEAN needed to move deliberately, and not precipitously toss aside principles like consensus decision-making that had served it well over its 40 year history. Similarly, the non-resident BANDAR SER 00000064 004 OF 004 Austrian Ambassador told us that during a courtesy call he paid on Foreign Minister Prince Mohamed during his last visit to Brunei, Mohamed shared his belief that ASEAN integration will take a very long time to achieve. ¶16. (C) Those cautious views aside, the GOB recognizes the necessity of creating a more dynamic ASEAN. In a revealing comment that indicates what's really driving ASEAN integration, Energy Minister (and close advisor to the Sultan) Pehin Yahya told Ambassador "India and China and moving forward so rapidly, we in ASEAN have no choice but to try to keep up." SKODON