NUSA DUA, Indonesia, Oct 3 Kyodo ...

NUSA DUA, Indonesia, Oct 3 Kyodo

Creating a more stable and resilient Southeast Asian community based upon security, economic and sociocultural cooperation will be the focus of discussions when Southeast Asian leaders fit 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 way of the Indonesian government to finance the security measures alone.

The summit itself will give rise to 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 according to 2020.

Also at the top of the agenda of this year's summit of the 10-member cluster will be efforts to enhance political and economic cooperation with their Northeast Asian partners China, Japan and southern 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 beneath which formal negotiations to create a regional delivered trade area (FTA) by dint of 2020 will start in early 2005

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

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

Indonesia, which imprisons 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 dead body It is now a voluntary, nonbinding corpse with little real power to consequence change.

''Indonesia wants to call onward other member countries to make the corpse more binding and not simply be an alternative body (to decide 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 constituent in the ASEAN Security Community since it cogitates ASEAN's commitment to resolve all differences, disputes and conflicts peacefully.''

Indonesia also confidences the official said, the council can be used to establish disputes not only among ASEAN countries, still also disputes between ASEAN members and partners that have signed the TAC, citing continual disputes in the southerly China Sea as one example.

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

To peacefully reduce 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 compliance of all 10 ASEAN countries -- Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.

Papua fresh Guinea was the first political division 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 press outed 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 a certain opposition from members who worry empowerment could create a security pact.

Foreign Ministry spokesman Marty Natalegawa said that in subordination to 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 hinder arms smuggling, piracy or human trafficking and joint exercises on ground forces are envisioned.

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

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