AFP
ASEAN'S failure to come to grips with the brewing Thai-Cambodia border conflict at ministerial talks here has underlined the organisation's inability to take action during a crisis, observers say.
Some 4,000 Thai and Cambodian soldiers are facing off over a small patch of land near the 11th-century Preah Vihear temple, in one of the most dangerous flare-ups of regional tensions in decades.
The dispute erupted just before foreign ministers of the 10-member Association of South-east Asian Nations convened for annual talks ahead of Asia's top security meeting, the Asean Regional Forum, which embraces their 17 partners including China, the United States and Russia.
Asean held crisis talks on the issue, and extracted an assurance that the neighbours would 'exert utmost efforts' to find a peaceful solution.
But Cambodia's request for the bloc to form a 'contact group' to act as an impartial broker was shot down by Thailand which opposes any intervention.
Asean's long-cherished convention of making decisions by consensus and not interfering in members' internal affairs made it impossible to move forward, and instead Cambodia has asked the United Nations Security Council to act.
'The thing is, Asean is not built to intervene in these kinds of disputes except to urge restraint,' said a former secretary-general of the group, Mr Rodolfo Severino.
'Asean has no armed force, it has no powers of coercion. So it's just the moral weight of the association that's being brought to bear,' he said.
Asean took a dim view of Cambodia's decision to go over its head and appeal to the UN, which some saw as an unwelcome internationalisation of the conflict.
'There is a view that this may be a little premature,' Singapore Foreign Minister George Yeo said on Thursday at the close of the Asean Regional Forum, whose members called for 'restraint, a speedy resolution and to maintain the status quo'.
Mr Tim Huxley from the International Institute for Strategic Studies in Singapore said the mild response showed Asean was 'still underdeveloped as a security grouping'.
'For many years Asean has talked about doing more in the security sphere,' he said. 'If it's going to maintain its relevance it's going to have to try a bit harder.'
'The issue has now gone to the UN Security Council and I think it's an illustration of how far South-east Asian countries still have to go in developing a security community.'
The same shortcomings have vexed Asean's attempts to rein in member state Myanmar, which has earned widespread condemnation for its human rights abuses and refusal to shift towards democracy.
Myanmar came to this week's talks in the bad books for extending opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi's house arrest for another year, and refusing to quickly open its doors to a foreign-led relief effort after a catastrophic cyclone in May.
But it escaped with effectively a slap on the wrist. Ministers said after an informal dinner on Sunday that they were 'deeply disappointed' with the action against Ms Aung San Suu Kyi, but in the formal communique the words were omitted.
Mr Huxley said the bloc has set itself lofty standards, including a goal to establish a political and security community by 2015.
But in a grouping that includes authoritarian states, democracies and semi-democracies, a military dictatorship, and an absolute monarchy, that kind of cohesiveness will be difficult to achieve.
Asean Secretary-General Surin Pitsuwan, himself a former Thai foreign minister, defended the bloc's failure to achieve a breakthrough in the crisis with Cambodia.
'I think the entry point has to be very carefully chosen,' he said.
On this issue, intervention would have to wait until 'both sides are more ready and emotions calm down a little bit', he said.
Some 4,000 Thai and Cambodian soldiers are facing off over a small patch of land near the 11th-century Preah Vihear temple, in one of the most dangerous flare-ups of regional tensions in decades.
The dispute erupted just before foreign ministers of the 10-member Association of South-east Asian Nations convened for annual talks ahead of Asia's top security meeting, the Asean Regional Forum, which embraces their 17 partners including China, the United States and Russia.
Asean held crisis talks on the issue, and extracted an assurance that the neighbours would 'exert utmost efforts' to find a peaceful solution.
But Cambodia's request for the bloc to form a 'contact group' to act as an impartial broker was shot down by Thailand which opposes any intervention.
Asean's long-cherished convention of making decisions by consensus and not interfering in members' internal affairs made it impossible to move forward, and instead Cambodia has asked the United Nations Security Council to act.
'The thing is, Asean is not built to intervene in these kinds of disputes except to urge restraint,' said a former secretary-general of the group, Mr Rodolfo Severino.
'Asean has no armed force, it has no powers of coercion. So it's just the moral weight of the association that's being brought to bear,' he said.
Asean took a dim view of Cambodia's decision to go over its head and appeal to the UN, which some saw as an unwelcome internationalisation of the conflict.
'There is a view that this may be a little premature,' Singapore Foreign Minister George Yeo said on Thursday at the close of the Asean Regional Forum, whose members called for 'restraint, a speedy resolution and to maintain the status quo'.
Mr Tim Huxley from the International Institute for Strategic Studies in Singapore said the mild response showed Asean was 'still underdeveloped as a security grouping'.
'For many years Asean has talked about doing more in the security sphere,' he said. 'If it's going to maintain its relevance it's going to have to try a bit harder.'
'The issue has now gone to the UN Security Council and I think it's an illustration of how far South-east Asian countries still have to go in developing a security community.'
The same shortcomings have vexed Asean's attempts to rein in member state Myanmar, which has earned widespread condemnation for its human rights abuses and refusal to shift towards democracy.
Myanmar came to this week's talks in the bad books for extending opposition leader Aung San Suu Kyi's house arrest for another year, and refusing to quickly open its doors to a foreign-led relief effort after a catastrophic cyclone in May.
But it escaped with effectively a slap on the wrist. Ministers said after an informal dinner on Sunday that they were 'deeply disappointed' with the action against Ms Aung San Suu Kyi, but in the formal communique the words were omitted.
Mr Huxley said the bloc has set itself lofty standards, including a goal to establish a political and security community by 2015.
But in a grouping that includes authoritarian states, democracies and semi-democracies, a military dictatorship, and an absolute monarchy, that kind of cohesiveness will be difficult to achieve.
Asean Secretary-General Surin Pitsuwan, himself a former Thai foreign minister, defended the bloc's failure to achieve a breakthrough in the crisis with Cambodia.
'I think the entry point has to be very carefully chosen,' he said.
On this issue, intervention would have to wait until 'both sides are more ready and emotions calm down a little bit', he said.
9 comments:
Here's a compelling reason behind the failure of ASEAN and UN: it's the failure of the Cambodian prime minister, because he played political card to gain political leverage prior to the general election. The Preah Vihear, for instance, is a political charade in which both Thai and Cambodian prime ministers played. In the end, however, the Thai and Cambodian people will be left as losers.
Again, the political scheme was choreographed and orchestrated by both prime ministers.
ASEAN is inability to settle any problem of its member such as Myanma, Cambodia vs Thai.
I see no benefit of becoming ASEAN member while the member seek for help but it is inability and throw back to settle by the own country by just saying RESTRAINT and Bilateral.
UN is still the best point to seek for any help.
EU is great and faster movement, they have their own currency which is euro curency and even stronger/more value than US dollar.
How about ASEAN? Only few head inside and all brain less people.
Dear all nationalists,
Monday talk this week between Cambodia and Thailand over Preah Vihear issue ended without any success. Though, the two countries agreed not fight and not to send more troop, one can see that each country is sending more troops to Preah Vihear Temple area. Why are they doing this?
I think that the two governments have secret deal to help and support each other. They are playing a dramma show. In the front stage, it looks they are enemies but at the back stage, they are friends. They are helping each other for their political survival.
In Thailand, Mr. Samak is in trouble for many things from opposition parties accusing him of being puppet of Thaksin - ex-prime minister. Many Thai people come to the street to demonstrate against the government. Now Thai government has to draw Thai people's attention to forget all the troubles by sending troop to claim for some parts of the land near the temple. For many Thai, Preah Vihear is a very sensative issue. They are very sorry to lose the temple. It is like many Cambodian feel of losing Kampuchea Krom to Vietnam. Now Thai people seem to forget the troubles Mr. Samak has and now the people are supportive to the government. So this tactic works in Thailand!
In Cambodia, this week is the most important week to decide the future of the dictator. 27 july is the general election day. He is very smart to take the golden opportunity from Preah Vihear Temple as his great acheivement. Now the government is sending more troop to the front line to protect the country, which is a great thing to do. But I wonder if our STRONG MAN can do the same to his Bong Thom - Vietnam?
All is just show so that we might forget many bad things and crimes committed by them.
This Sunday I hope you all go to vote for a better change. You young people deserve a new and better leadership. Will you let the same man control your life forever? For me "No". If he stays in power for the next five years, my life will be shorten for five years. I want to see my sons and my students to live in society where you all enjoys peace, justice, freedom and prosperity.
I do not think the current leadership can give all these to me. He stays in power too long. He has done very little things to improve the situation. Every time I go to Vietnam and Thailand, I see many beggers who are Khmer. My heart is broken.
It is a national ashame to see our soldiers in Preah Vihear Temple, wearing flip flop, sandal, old uniform and old guns while our enemy wearing nice uniform, modern weapon. Our soldiers do not even have rain coat to wear when it rains. It is so sad to see this. As a results, we, the people have to donate some money, dry food and other materials to support our soldiers. This is very good people participation to show our passion to our nation. But where does the money for our soldiers go? Every year the national assembly allocate a lot of budget for our defense. But at the end our soldiers do not have better attention and care. You see corruption is a root causes of everything, even worse corruption in defense affairs. It is very dangerous if our soldiers have low motivation and do not get better attention from us.
These soldiers leave their sons, daughters, wives and family and even risk their lives to protect us and our country. Should they not deserve better care from the government? Or should we let them the way they are? We must vote for change! Change for the better!
I think we should give opposition parties a chance by voting for them. They have spoken too much. Now let them do it and let the current leadership rest, sit, watch and speak. If the opposition parties can't do it, we kick them out next term.
No where in the world is rich and prosperous with the same leadership. Even China and Vietnam have changed their leadership several time already. That is why their countries are rich now.
If you are impressed by this email, please send it to your friends. Tell you the truth, now I feel much better by writing and sending this email to you. My life is five years longer.
Everyone knows that the current spat is purely (nothing else) political charade.
WOW! The whole show of Preah Vihear spat between Thailand and Cambodia is certainly quite theatrical for those who are not well versed with political charade.
Signed: People of Thailand and Cambodia
No use on ASEAN.
Blogspot.com cited as the No. 1 host for malware
Posted by Robert Vamosi 3 commentsShare Email Print According to a report out Wednesday, antivirus vendor Sophos says it detects one Web page with malicious content every 5 seconds--a trend that is up 300 percent from 2007.
In its Security Threat Report for the first half of 2008, Sophos says it finds just over 16,000 malicious pages each day, mostly the result of malicious SQL-injection attacks on legitimate Web sites such as the attack on Sony's U.S. PlayStation site in July. Tricks used by criminal hackers include using simple HTML code to place via SQL-injection a 1x1 pixel element (about the size of a pin prick) on an infected page. In loading the page, the Internet browser would then contact a server running exploit scripts and malicious code. But because the sites are legitimate, some security vendors struggle with blocking infected Web pages.
As for illegitimate sites, Sophos notes that Geocities and Blogger both make it easy for anyone to set up a Web site without much identification. Blogger, owned by Google, is particularly problematic, says Sophos, with the blog site alone accounting for nearly 2 percent of all malware hosts. I is not only possible for the Blogger sites to host malicious code, but criminal attackers can also inject links to malicious sites in the comments sections of the blogs.
A spokeperson for Google said "Google takes the security of our users very seriously, and we work hard to protect them from malware. Using Blogger, or any Google product, to serve or host malware is a violation of our product policies. We actively work to detect and remove sites that serve malware from our network."
Screw the ASEAN and UN; these two organizations are useless to the world community.
I've never seen any organization that is so pathetic like ASEAN. Also, the fucking ASEAN is heavily and disproportionately favored Thailand over Cambodia over the Preah Vihear temple issue.
Again, fuck the ASEAN and UN.
Yes, it was very ashamed to see Cambodian Soldiers wearing out of date uniform, shoe, and gun. This is not a national army but a nation’s crime. The generals have taken the Soldiers’ salaries. So this left them with nothing. It is really ashamed.
Thus, I am confident that the Cambodian Soldiers can fight like a really Soldiers.
This is one of the main reasons why Cambodian never wins a fight in war. It is because we are just never fully equipped and armed our military men and women. Unlike Cambodia, Vietnam and Thai, they are fully equipped and armed.
Post a Comment