BANGKOK, March 9 Kyodo choiceed ...

BANGKOK, March 9 Kyodo

choiceed editorial excerpts from the Asia-Pacific press:

PEACE KEEPING IDEA IS AHEAD OF ITS TIME (Bangkok column Bangkok)

Foreign ministers of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations met in Vietnam last week and deposit off the idea of forming a joint military force. The proposal came not at home of the blue last month at a meeting in Jakarta between senior officials from the 10 ASEAN members and the United Nations.

entertainer Indonesia proposed establishing an ASEAN peacekeeping force. The idea may have been ripe for discussion at an international discourse but ministers should have dismissed it more forcefully at their Halong Bay meeting last week.

Forming a joint military force from the ASEAN member countries is a bad idea. The prime reason is that ASEAN was established as a regional corpse to promote trade and other cooperation. The five founding countries and their visionary foreign ministers were clear that ASEAN was not -- and would not at all become -- a military pact. There were fit reasons for that, and there still are.

A not many Cold War warriors tried to make ASEAN into a successor of the Southeast Asian Treaty Organization, moreover the effort was properly doomed.

Today, ASEAN sways are communist, socialist, democratic and dictatorships. Members trust common another, and nations of the world recognize and have a high opinion of the grouping. A formal military alliance of any prototype would change the balance of trust, and the balance of actions.

Indonesia saw the peacekeeping force as a standing army ready to go on to any embattled country to help to restore civil order. The theory is that an insecure nation would ask for similar help.

Some ASEAN members are eagerly dedicated to peace and security, and the region has seen no conflict since the Vietnamese army left Cambodia a generation ago. Each member of the association can send forth troops or officials to peacekeeping missions. Many already do so

upon the other hand, ASEAN and its members face general security threats. First and foremost is terrorism, followed by the agency of organized, cross-border crime. A standing military force will have no force on these scourges.

ASEAN must establish greater security cooperation, including among its military officers. A standing military force is not privationed Instead, members must build better intelligence and information links to crack down onward the major threats faced at all.

(March 9)

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