Foreign Secretary Alberto Romulo delivers a press conference at the Philippine International Convention Centre in Manila on July 26. Mr Romulo issued assurances that the annual ASEAN ministerial meeting and ASEAN Regional Forum scheduled for July 29 to August 2 in Manila would not be affected by a looming major offensive against guerrillas in the country’s southern Mindanao region. Pic: AFP/Romeo Gacad

MYANMAR’S Foreign Minister, U Nyan Win, left for Manila last week to participate in the annual meeting of foreign ministers from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and from the regional grouping’s dialogue partners that began yesterday.

Discussions at the meeting of ASEAN foreign ministers today (July 30) were expected to focus on the proposed charter of the regional organisation. The committee assigned to draft the charter was expected to submit the first draft of the charter to the meeting.

Ms Rosario Manalo, who heads the drafting committee, was quoted by AP on July 25 as saying that the charter seeks to promote human rights and “would allow ASEAN to deal with its human rights problems in its own way and parry Western criticism of problems in the region”.

“It’ll turn ASEAN into a more rules-based organisa-tion,” the Philippines’ Foreign Assistant Secretary, Luis Cruz, told the news agency.

He said the draft charter would call to maintain many of the principles that ASEAN has long observed, including its cardinal principal of noninterference in each other’s domestic affairs.

Although diplomats say the landmark charter could turn the ASEAN bloc into an EU-style rules-based grouping, others worry about the difficulty the 10 ASEAN members have faced in coming to an agreement over sanctions to be imposed on members who break the rules.

The document is nearly complete, with diplomats and experts working hard since December on the delicate wording that seeks to codify ASEAN objectives and norms, officials say.

After the foreign ministers add their own comments and revisions, the final document will be submitted to the ASEAN leaders in November at their annual meeting in Singapore.

“In addition to giving the organisation a legal personality and some measure of promoting compliance, the ASEAN charter is expected to set certain norms in political governance,” said MC Abad, who heads the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) unit in ASEAN’s Jakarta-based secretariat.

The charter, he said, will also “set a standard of behaviour in inter-state relations, but also in how they govern internally.”

“It will prescribe the way forward with the consent of all ASEAN members upon adoption,” Abad told AFP.

But while the charter is seen to help transform the bloc into a European Union-style organisation 40 years after it was created in 1967, analysts and critics say it remains to be seen whether it would lead to changes in errant member states.

ASEAN Secretary General Ong Keng Yong said in Singapore recently that about 90 percent of the text of the charter’s first draft was already complete.
However, he said it would likely exclude punishment for erring members.
“I don’t think we will have a provision for voting or sanctions on any guy who did not measure up,” said Ong.

“Even if you provide a paragraph for sanctions and nobody follows it, what does it mean? It’s even worse. ... We come across as more hypocritical,” he said.

Diplomatic sources said members of a special taskforce ASEAN created to draft the charter have included a provision that would call for the setting up of a commission to tackle the issue of human rights.

U Nyan Win is also expected to participate in a meeting of ASEAN foreign ministers and their counterparts from dialogue partners China, Japan and South Korea, as well as from India, the US and the EU.