Australia moots Asian non-aggression pact

Australia’s foreign minister is expected to announce next week that Australia will sign a non-aggression pact with its south-east Asian neighbours when he attends an ASEAN security forum, an analyst said today.

Australian National University Asian security expert Tony Kevin said the move would come during Foreign Minister Alexander Downer’s trip to Laos, which started yesterday, for the Association of Southeast Asian Nations Regional Forum, Asia’s biggest annual security meeting.

Downer told parliament last month that negotiations with the 10 ASEAN governments on Australia’s conditions for signing their Treaty of Amity and Co-operation would be completed before parliament resumes on August 9.

He said he was hopeful that Australia would sign the treaty, which ASEAN has made a prerequisite for Australia being invited to the inaugural East Asia Summit in Kuala Lumpur on December 14.

“If we can come up with a satisfactory solution – and I hope we can – I think we can achieve the perfect outcome for Australia which would be to participate in the East Asia Summit without in any way undermining the importance of our existing treaty arrangements with countries outside ASEAN,” he told parliament.

Australia also has concerns about ASEAN’s mechanism for resolving disputes under the treaty, and wants to retain a right to criticise countries such as Burma despite the treaty barring interference in signatories’ internal affairs.

Kevin said he expected Downer to announce Canberra would sign the treaty after the US government this week supported Australia joining the East Asia Summit.

US President George Bush told Prime Minister John Howard in a meeting in Washington this week that he would be glad for Australia to sign the treaty, The Sydney Morning Herald newspaper reported today, citing an unnamed official at the meeting.

“I’d expect that Howard would (agree to sign the treaty) now that he’s been given the green light from Washington to go ahead and do it,” said Kevin, a former Australian diplomat.

Kevin said the treaty need not conflict with Australia’s 54-year-old defence pact with the US.

“But if the US ever wanted to invade an ASEAN country in the way it invaded Iraq and wanted Australia as an ally, it would present a problem,” Kevin said.

The opposition Labour Party has said that by reconsidering the treaty, Prime Minister John Howard was backing down from his policy that Australia has a right to launch military attacks in other nations to prevent terrorist threats.

Howard has denied any back-down from his so-called regional pre-emption policy which has angered Malaysia and other neighbours.

ASEAN’s members are Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.