TOKYO, May 24 (Bernama) -- Malaysia has recognised the Asean Plus Three (Asean+3) process as the primary vehicle in regard to the East Asian Community building instead of other regional cooperation platforms.
Declaring Malaysia's stance on the process that is best for Asian Community building, Prime Minister Datuk Seri Abdullah Ahmad Badawi said only Asean+3 process involving the 10 Association of South-East Asian Nations (Asean) members, Japan, China and South Korea seeks to build an Asian Community, or to be more exact, an East Asian Community.
Quoting the East Asia Vision group report and the East Asia study group report, he said the Asean+3 process sought to build an East Asian Community of peace, prosperity and progress.
"This stance, however, does not make other regional cooperation processes namely, the East Asia Summit or Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (Apec) any less important, only that they serve different purposes," he said in his keynote address on "Deepening Cooperation Towards A True Community" at the 13th Nikkei International Conference on the Future of Asia here today.
Abdullah said the East Asia Summit was an important forum to conduct dialogues and forge cooperation between the countries of the East Asian Community and their most important partners in development while Apec was a trans-Pacific forum to foster trade and economic cooperation among the member economies.
"The East Asia Summit process and Apec have a larger geographical footprint in terms of participating countries and economies but they have much narrower agenda.
"Fundamentally important as the two are in their respective roles, their purpose is not community building," he said.
Abdullah said a true community would go beyond mere functional cooperation.
"It is one in which the nations and peoples involved share a sense of common identity and common strategic purpose. They also subscribe to a set of values and norms they consider important and common to all," he said.
Abdullah said the countries that comprised a community with a common identity, a common strategic purpose and a shared set of values cannot be too dissimilar.
"They usually share a common and contiguous geographical space. They are bounded by strong economic ties, and above all, they share a common socio-cultural background," he said.
These attributes, he said, could be found in the European community and increasingly also in South-East Asia and East Asia.
He said the countries that were disparated would find it difficult to come together as a community.
"For instance, it is difficult to visualise a community of European and African nations, or European and East Asian nations but the European logic could be applied to the Asean region or East Asia," he said.
Abdullah said he preferred to use the term 'community building', which is an on-going process, rather than 'community' as he visualised a true community as an organism to be cultured rather than an organisation to be formed.
He said architecture, institutions and rule books were important and they must be created and introduced gradually as the community becomes strong in spirit as well as substantive in economic, social and political terms.
"Asean, for instance, is an experience worthy of study and perhaps emulate," he said.
He said after nearly four decades of sustained cooperation in which the foundations of the community were patiently extended throughout the region, Asean was ready to articulate its model of community in the Bali Concord II of 2003.
"The Asean community will be an amalgam of three communities, namely an economic community, a security community and a socio-economic community, he said.
"The coming years will be devoted to realising the idea of community and it will be reiterated in the Asean Charter that will be launched in December this year," he said.
Abdullah highlighted seven things that East Asian Community could do for successful community building. They are:
* The community must have some common attributes;
* Allow for diversity;
* Ensuring that it rests on a strong foundation of equality, mutual respect and consensus;
* Building confidence and trust;
* Have a genuine desire to share and learn;
* Recognise that true community is not about form but of function; and,
* The members of a community must be able to productively engage and cooperate with countries outside the community.
He said any tendency towards becoming closed or creating blocs should be avoided at all costs and communities like the East Asian Community should be well-integrated into the global political, economic and security systems.
-- BERNAMA
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