By Luke Hunt
Burma is likely to be the main talking point at next week’s ASEAN summit. But will they dare tackle China’s territorial claims?
Ten years ago, Cambodia took over the chair of ASEAN for the first time amid consternation Phnom Penh was tackling too much too soon. The city’s infrastructure remained devastated by three decades of war that had just ended in 1998, and the global security environment had been turned upside down by the September 11, 2001 attacks on the United States.
Cambodia was widely regarded as the regional basket case, and Phnom Penh hardly seemed the place for a gathering of heads of state, their foreign ministers and assorted bureaucrats from as far afield as the United States, China and Australia to those within the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations.
Thanks largely to efforts by diplomats in the Singapore embassy, however, the summit and Cambodia’s year as chair was carried off with aplomb. Next week, the annual ASEAN summit returns to a vastly improved Cambodia, with Burma – a contemporary regional basket case –at the top of the agenda.
“Myanmar (Burma) isn’t in the official agenda of ASEAN, but regional leaders will use the gathering to discuss political development in Myanmar unofficially,” says Kamarulnizam Abdullah, a professor of national security at the Universiti Utara Malaysia (UUM).
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