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)

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SUMMARY
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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.

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FOCUS ON THE ASEAN CHARTER
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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).

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DELAYING A "UNION," BUILDING "COMMUNITIES"
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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.)

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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.

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EXPULSION AND BURMA
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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.

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ASEAN COOPERATION ON CT AND ENVIRONMENT
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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

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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.

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REGIONAL ARCHITECTURE -- STILL A WORK IN PROGRESS
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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.)

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30TH ANNIVERSARY OF U.S.-ASEAN DIALOGUE
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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.

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COMMENT: ASEAN MAKES HASTE, SLOWLY
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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

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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