WASHINGTON, Nov 2 – The United States is committed to long-term engagement with Asean despite a plethora of geopolitical challenges demanding its attention elsewhere, says a senior US diplomat.
In an interview ahead of this month’s inaugural US-Asean Summit in Singapore, US envoy for Asean affairs Scot Marciel said Washington would like to work more closely with Asean on a range of global as well as regional issues, such as climate change, disaster relief, and economic integration.
“It’s a very positive agenda,” said Ambassador Marciel, who is also a deputy assistant secretary in the State Department.
Since taking office earlier this year, President Barack Obama and top US diplomat Hillary Clinton have made plain their desire to step up their engagement with Asia, including the 10 member countries of Asean.
But with the immediate geopolitical challenges confronting the US – Afghanistan, Pakistan, Iran and Iraq – largely unchanged, would its engagement with Asean become relegated to a form of “drive-by diplomacy”?
Washington, said Marciel in response, has already gone beyond the rhetoric and demonstrated its commitment with action.
Mrs Clinton, for instance, visited the Asean Secretariat when she was in Jakarta earlier this year, becoming the first US Secretary of State to do so. In July, she signed a friendship treaty with Asean, and pledged to open a US mission to Asean in Jakarta.
“You can look a year or two years from now and draw your own conclusions about US commitment,” said Marciel. “Everything I see suggests that the commitment is long term.”
Asked whether Washington planned to make the US-Asean summit an annual affair, he said it was too early to tell.
“We have to see how it develops,” he said. “We are now focused on making this one happen and from there we’ll judge. Obviously it would be the President’s decision.”
One highly watched issue at the upcoming US-Asean meeting, which will be held on the sidelines of the annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit, will be the ongoing thaw in US-Myanmar ties and the potential impact of this on the region.
Marciel and Assistant Secretary of State Kurt Campbell, the top US diplomat to East Asia, will travel to Myanmar tomorrow for talks with the government and the opposition, including detained democracy icon Aung San Suu Kyi.
The talks will be the second round of official meetings in as many months, following a first discussion in New York in late September. These talks are reportedly the highest between the two countries in nearly a decade.
“The ... trip will continue this conversation, but also allow us to meet with members of the opposition and ethnic minority groups to hear their views,” Marciel told The Straits Times.
At the meetings with Myanmar’s military government, he added, the US will continue to push the message that “there is a positive way ahead” if the government takes concrete steps to begin a dialogue with the opposition, to broaden political participation and to improve human rights.
He declined, however, to talk in detail about any specific or concrete step the US hopes to see from the Myanmar government.
The advance diplomatic work on this front will matter, as Obama will likely encounter a senior Myanmese leader directly during the US-Asean summit. Given the highly polarised political environment at home, such an encounter would likely lend more ammunition to the President’s critics, who argue that he is “too soft” on rogue regimes.
Said Marciel: “I don’t want to speak on the domestic politics of this, but what I would say is that the administration thought it was important to have a meeting with Asean leaders and we understood that would include senior officials from the Myanmar government.
“So the decision was made knowing that.” – The Straits Times
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