SPEAKING
FREELY East Timor's slow ASEAN
embrace By Loro Horta
Speaking Freely is an Asia Times
Online feature that allows guest writers to have
their say. Please click hereif you are interested in
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When the foreign
ministers from the member states of the
Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) met
in Bali last month, East Timor's admission into
the 10-member regional grouping was again on the
agenda. And, once again, Asia's newest country
(whose official name is Democratic Republic of
Timor-Leste) maintained its observer status in the
influential regional grouping.
Some media
speculated that ASEAN'S decision to delay East
Timor's immediate admission and take a gradual
approach to its
integration into the
grouping was due to pressures from certain
member states, which for
various political reasons opposed and threatened
to use their veto power to block East Timor's
future membership.
It was said that
Myanmar's military-run government was particularly
opposed because of Timorese President Xanana
Gusmao's known close ties to its political
opposition. However, the real reasons behind East
Timor's delayed admission are far more prosaic.
Burdened by its long history of foreign
occupation, East Timor simply lacks the human and
financial resources to manage ASEAN membership.
Consider that every year ASEAN stages no fewer
than 620 different meetings, ranging widely from
foreign relations to agriculture to old-fashioned
cultural exchanges, at great expense. Yet East
Timor still lacks technical expertise in most of
these fields, not to mention enough people with a
decent command of the English language - ASEAN's
lingua franca.
Therefore, ASEAN'S measured
approach to East Timor's integration makes good
sense and is actually quite welcomed by the
leadership in Dili. As East Timor moves to
consolidate its bureaucracy and develop its
technical infrastructure, the number of meetings
to be attended will gradually increase, and its
senior government representatives are scheduled to
start participating soon in more sensitive
security-related discussions. In that direction,
East Timor has already signed on to the ASEAN
Regional Forum (ARF), an influential regional
strategic talk shop, and is soon expected to sign
ASEAN's Treaty of Amity.
The fact that
East Timor was allowed to join the ARF, for
instance, clearly indicates that the reports of
Myanmar's opposition to its accession bid are
entirely misinformed. Last June, East Timor's
foreign minister, Jose Ramos Horta, was extremely
well received during his visit to Yangon, where he
met with the head of Myanmar's military junta and
other senior officials.
In fact, Myanmar
has shifted its initial objection into a position
of support. There's a catch, of course. Yangon
believes that once East Timor formally joins ASEAN
it will be bound by the grouping's principle of
"non-interference" in member countries' internal
affairs and hence will need to abstain from
contacting Myanmar's isolated political
opposition, including detained Nobel Peace Prize
winner Aung San Suu Kyi.
More pressing are
East Timor's financial constraints. Attending all
of ASEAN's 620 or so meetings a year would incur
astronomical expenses for a country still
struggling to repair damages and get basic
infrastructure in place. As an ASEAN member, East
Timor would be expected to host some of these
meetings, which, depending on their importance,
can cost millions of dollars and would require an
expensive upgrade of the country's virtually
non-existent conference facilities.
The
Timorese Ministry of Foreign Affairs' total budget
for the fiscal year 2006 was a mere US$5 million.
In addition to hosting meetings, ASEAN membership
requires that members open embassies in all 10
ASEAN nations; at present East Timor has only nine
embassies and two consulates worldwide, including
embassies in Jakarta and Kuala Lumpur.
Expanding the diplomatic service will not
only pose financial challenges, but will also put
a heavy strain on severely limited human
resources. The Ministry of Foreign Affairs
currently employs a mere 85 people, both overseas
and domestically, and of these only 55 are
actually diplomats. Two of the country's newly
established foreign embassies have not been able
to open because of a lack of suitable candidates
to staff the missions.
Four years after
achieving independence, East Timor is still eager
to join ASEAN. It is anticipated that by 2010,
with expected major increases in economic growth
derived from economic restructuring and the
expansion of the oil sector, that Asia's newest
nation will be financially fit enough to accede.
The government doubled its annual budget in 2006,
from $120 million to $230 million, and now plans
to open embassies in Bangkok and Manila next year.
The Ministry of Foreign Affairs is also in
the process of establishing a task force to deal
with the challenges of membership, and has started
organizing some limited international meetings,
including, perhaps appropriately, the UN
Decolonization meeting this year.
There is
no regional objection to East Timor's accession to
ASEAN; only resource constraints are holding it
back. But it's only a matter of time before the
current ASEAN 10 grows into the ASEAN 11, with
East Timor as the group's newest proud member.
Loro Horta is a master's degree
candidate at Nanyang Technology University's
Institute of Defense and Strategic Studies based
in Singapore. He previously worked as an adviser
to the Timorese Defense Department and is the son
of Foreign Minister Jose Ramos-Horta. The views
expressed here are his own.
(Copyright
2006 Loro Horta.)
Speaking Freely is
an Asia Times Online feature that allows guest
writers to have their say. Please click hereif you are interested in
contributing.
