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» 20.07.09 Jakarta suicide bombings dominate Phuket talks |
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20.07.09 Jakarta suicide bombings dominate Phuket talks
Source: Bangkok Post
Phuket - Asian foreign ministers met on Sunday
ahead of the continent's biggest security dialogue, under the shadow of
the Jakarta bomb attacks and North Korea's nuclear programme.
A proposed regional rights body that critics say will lack teeth to
tackle violators such as Burma is also on the agenda at days of talks
culminating in the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean)
Regional Forum.
The 27-member forum, which includes Asian
nations, the EU and the United States, meets on the resort isle of
Phuket on Thursday with a debut appearance from US Secretary of State
Hillary Clinton.
The fight against Al-Qaeda and the Taliban in
Pakistan as well as tensions between Thailand and Cambodia over an
ancient temple on their border are also on the long list of security
problems facing Asia.
But Friday's twin suicide bombings at
hotels in the Indonesian capital which police said left nine people
dead have unexpectedly thrown the Southeast Asian terror network Jemaah
Islamiyah (JI) back into the spotlight.
Indonesian police Sunday
confirmed JI as having carried out the attack, which has shattered
years of calm in Asean's most populous member nation. The group carried
out the 2002 Bali bombings which left more than 200 dead.
"It
remains for all of us to work vigorously in future to prevent terrorist
acts," Thai Foreign Minister Kasit Piromya said after meeting
counterparts from the 10-member Asean in Phuket on Sunday.
"At
the beginning of our meeting, all of us expressed condolences to the
Indonesian government and people and especially to the bereaved
families," Kasit said.
Kasit meanwhile defended an unprecedented
new regional rights body as ministers prepared to endorse its terms of
reference on Monday, despite admitting that it would involve
compromises on military-ruled Burma.
Burma has consistently been
Asean's most troublesome member since joining the bloc in 1997. The
generals have stirred fresh international outrage by putting democracy
icon Aung San Suu Kyi on trial over an incident in which an American
swam to her lakeside house.
Leaders of the bloc are set to
launch the rights watchdog in October but critics say it will be
powerless to investigate or punish abuses such as those by Burma but
also by communist Vietnam and Laos.
"It is important to make
this human rights body credible, but at the same time take into account
the real situation in Asean member countries," Kasit said.
Shortly
before he spoke, Burmese authorities detained around 20 members of Aung
San Suu Kyi's party as they headed back from events to mark the
anniversary of her father's death in 1947.
Burma also showed its
defiance of foreign opinion earlier this month by refusing to allow UN
Secretary General Ban Ki-moon to visit the opposition leader when he
visited.
Meanwhile hopes of any resolution to the tensions over
North Korea's nuclear programme dimmed after the communist state's
foreign minister declined to attend the ARF and sent a roving
ambassador instead.
US State Department officials said they
expected the showdown over North Korea's nuclear and missile tests and
political repression in Burma to be among the leading topics that
Clinton will discuss when she arrives.
Regional tensions have
soared since the North quit six-nation talks on nuclear disarmament and
vowed to restart its atomic weapons programme in the wake of its recent
defiant nuclear test and missile launches.
Foreign ministers from the other five parties -- the US, Russia, China, Japan and South Korea -- will all be in Phuket.
But
Bridget Welsh, an associate professor of political science at the
Singapore Management University, said the ARF's role in containing
North Korea would be "very limited".
"Asean countries (in particular) will not be able to do more than express their concern," Welsh said.
Thousands
of troops and police threw a ring of steel around Phuket to prevent a
repeat of anti-government protests which derailed a key Asian summit in
the coastal city of Pattaya in April.
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