NUSA DUA, Indonesia, family 3 Kyod...

NUSA DUA, Indonesia, family 3 Kyodo

Creating a more stable and resilient Southeast Asian community based forward security, economic and sociocultural cooperation will be the focus of discussions when Southeast Asian leaders confront on the Indonesian resort island Bali from Monday.

The summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) is being held just five days before the commemoration of the bombing attacks upon the ''paradise island'' last year that claimed 202 lives, chiefly those of foreign holidaymakers.

Security has been tightened ahead of the summit, with more than 4400 regular police and military personnel opened and antiterror teams, along with sea and air patrols, also in readiness.

A total 399 billion rupiah (about $48 million) has been earmarked by the agency of the Indonesian government to finance the security measures alone.

The summit itself will cause the Bali Concord 2, containing an ASEAN declaration to establish an ASEAN Community comprising the universals of an ASEAN Security Community, an ASEAN Economic Community and an ASEAN Social and Cultural Community from 2020.

Also at the top of the agenda of this year's summit of the 10-member form into groups will be efforts to enhance political and economic cooperation with their Northeast Asian partners China, Japan and southward Korea and South Asian partner India.

Among a number of other documents to be signed with the partners is a framework for comprehensive economic partnership between ASEAN and Japan subordinate to which formal negotiations to create a regional at liberty trade area (FTA) by dint of 2020 will start in early 2005

According to the draft document, the economic partnership, including ultimate parts of a possible FTA, should be complet as promptly as possible by 2012 for Japan and six of the 10 ASEAN members and five years later of time by the agency of the newer ASEAN members.

With China, the Southeast Asian leaders will sign a declaration onward strategic partnership for peace and prosperity to pave the way for the establishment of the ASEAN-China FTA on 2010 and to achieve the goal of $100 billion in two-way annual trade by way of 2005.

Indonesia, which occupys ASEAN's presidency this year, is pushing efforts to activate and empower the High Council of ASEAN's 1976 Treaty of Amity and Cooperation (TAC) as a conflict resolution mechanism corpse It is now a voluntary, nonbinding material substance with little real power to purport change.

''Indonesia wants to call onward other member countries to make the carcass more binding and not solely be an alternative body (to stool a dispute among its member countries),'' an official from the political and security directorate of the Indonesian Foreign Ministry told Kyodo News

A draft of the Bali Concord 2 obtained according to Kyodo News, says the high council ''shall be the important composing in the ASEAN Security Community since it contemplates ASEAN's commitment to resolve all differences, disputes and conflicts peacefully.''

Indonesia also possibility of goods the official said, the council can be used to free from doubt disputes not only among ASEAN countries, unless also disputes between ASEAN members and partners that have signed the TAC, citing continual disputes in the southern China Sea as one example.

The TAC is a regional digest of conduct in which its signatory states hostage respect for the independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity of all nations, noninterference in internal affairs of single in kind another, peaceful settlement of intraregional disputes, renunciation of the threat or use of force and effective cooperation.

To peacefully disentangle disputes, it mandates the establishment of a high council made up of ministerial delegates from the parties as a dispute-settlement mechanism.

The treaty was amended in 1998 to allow countries outside ASEAN to accede to it with the coherence of all 10 ASEAN countries -- Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.

Papua recent Guinea was the first abiding habitation outside ASEAN to sign the TAC.

At the two-day Bali summit, China and India will also join and Russia also submitted an application to join.

Japan has reportedly uttered an interest in acceding to the TAC in future

Indonesia's bid to empower the High Council of ASEAN, however, according to the Indonesian official, has received any opposition from members who worry empowerment could create a security pact.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Marty Natalegawa said that below the ASEAN Security Community general [i]or[/i] abstract notion there is no intention to build a defense pact or alliance, nevertheless ''military and maritime cooperation'' of the like kind as joint naval patrols to obstruct arms smuggling, piracy or human trafficking and joint exercises through ground forces are envisioned.

Another official said that with similar cooperation, it is felt ASEAN could interpret its own internal problems and maintain its sovereignty.

''It would be useful to diminish international pressure and interference like what is happening in Iraq and Afghanistan,'' the official said.