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EAS best platform for Indo-Pacific talks: Indonesia

ASEAN-led mechanisms, such as the East Asia Summit (EAS), are appropriate platforms to discuss Indo-Pacific cooperation, Indonesia told an ASEAN-Japan meeting recently

Dian Septiari (The Jakarta Post)
Jakarta
Tue, June 19, 2018

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EAS best platform for Indo-Pacific talks: Indonesia

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SEAN-led mechanisms, such as the East Asia Summit (EAS), are appropriate platforms to discuss Indo-Pacific cooperation, Indonesia told an ASEAN-Japan meeting recently.

Senior officials from Japan and ASEAN member countries met on Wednesday for the 33rd ASEAN-Japan Forum in Tokyo.

Japan’s senior deputy foreign affairs minister, Takeo Mori, said in his opening speech that Japan wanted to develop tangible cooperation with ASEAN in regional peace and stability through Japan’s Free and Open Indo-Pacific strategy.

“Japan considers this concept as supportive of the principle of ‘ASEAN Centrality’ and views ASEAN member countries as ‘hubs’ of the Indian and Pacific oceans, so ASEAN has an important role to play in implementing them,” Mori said as quoted by the Indonesian Foreign Ministry’s website.

The ministry’s ASEAN external cooperation director, Benny Yan Pieter Siahaan, said EAS was the most appropriate forum to start the conversation about the Indo-Pacific concept because in addition to Japan, other major powers, such as China, the United States and Russia had already been there.

Benny said amid different views, ASEAN “quite literally” stood in the middle, “so ASEAN has to bring this concept into synergy to advance the region”.

“We don’t know what the results will be, but at least ASEAN develops its own core position, because so far ASEAN itself has yet to reach a conclusion and is still discussing it,” he told The Jakarta Post on Monday.

An ASEAN initiative, EAS is a forum of 18 countries in the Asia-Pacific region, consisting of 10 ASEAN member states, Australia, China, India, Japan, New Zealand, South Korea, Russia and the US.

With the world’s largest economies, the US, China, Japan, India and Indonesia in the region, an Indo-Pacific cooperation has a combined gross domestic product (GDP) of some US$43 trillion.

The concept gained ground when US President Donald Trump used the term in his speeches during his Asian tour in 2017, but the notion dates back to an EAS meeting in 2002. Besides the US and Japan, other countries have set their eyes on the region, such as in India’s Act East policy and China’s Belt Road Initiative (BRI).

Benny said in March that officials from ASEAN countries held a 1.5-track meeting consisting of government representatives and experts in their personal capacities to talk about the Indo-Pacific concept, in which participants agreed that the concept had to be open, inclusive, abide rule of law and uphold ASEAN centrality.

He added that ASEAN would hold a senior officials meeting (SOM) retreat on the Indo-Pacific concept on July 12-13 in Bali.

Japan became ASEAN’s strategic partner in 2011, and Wednesday’s meeting was a part of routine meetings to discuss a number of regional and international issues.

The meeting was co-chaired by Japan and Brunei Darussalam as coordinators. Vietnam will replace Brunei as coordinator from August 2018 to August 2021.

Vietnamese media reported that head of the Vietnamese delegation, Deputy Foreign Minister Nguyen Quoc Dung, raised the issue of developments in the East Sea (South China Sea), stressing that the relevant sides must exercise self-restraint, thoroughly comply with international law and the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, and not carry out unilateral action that complicated the situation or contravened international law, thereby ensuring a favorable environment for peace and stability and negotiations on the code of conduct.

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