By Luke Hunt
When the Indonesian delegation flew into Phnom Penh for the ASEAN and East Asian Summits late last week President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono was hoping that there would be no repeat of the diplomatic events that marred a similar meeting of regional foreign ministers in July.
Back then a split emerged in the 10-member trading bloc over how best to deal with China and the growing tensions over conflicting territorial claims in the South China Sea.
As the political heavyweight of the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN), last time Jakarta managed to patch-up some of the differences after an emergency round of shuttle diplomacy by the country's foreign minister.
Wanting to maintain a united front from the start at this meeting, the focus was to be on attainable goals like the final signing of the ASEAN Declaration on Human Rights and promoting the framework for the Asian Bond Market Initiative. More importantly was the arrival of U.S. President Barack Obama and Washington reorienting its strategic outlook towards Southeast Asia.
These intentions notwithstanding, already by Monday ASEAN talks had broken down into squabbling over the Spratly and Paracel Islands, highlighting the deepening and seemingly intractable divisions within the group.
"There's an elephant in the room and its name is China," one analyst remarked.
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