In this issue:

ASEAN and China adopt an 'Early Harvest' Trade Accord

India: Growing Cooperation with ASEAN Not a Counter to China

Australian Prime Minister Howard Censured Over Iraq

Mahathir To Bush and Blair: 'In Japan, They Commit Harakiri'

China Says Blackouts in West Show Need for Regulation

NATO To Expand Its Role in Afghanistan

Opposition to Karzai Is Growing Within the Cabinet

South Korea Urges Washington To Be Conciliatory with North Korea

'Line 1' Road Between Seoul and Pyongyang Now Open

UN Envoy: North Korea Will Drop Nuclear Ambitions

From Volume 2, Issue Number 41 of Electronic Intelligence Weekly, Published Oct. 14, 2003
Asia News Digest

ASEAN and China adopt an 'Early Harvest' Trade Accord

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and China agreed Oct. 6 on a special tariff program in anticipation of their plan to set up the world's largest free-trade area (FTA). Trade ministers from ASEAN and China adopted a protocol paving the way for the implementation from Jan. 1, 2004 of a three-year program which gives early benefits to the ASEAN states through tariff reductions on a host of agricultural and manufactured goods, while the actual implementation of the FTA begins on Jan. 1, 2005, officials said from the preliminary ASEAN+3 meetings in Bali. The ASEAN states reciprocated by giving tariff concessions to China under a so-called tariff harmonized system for agricultural products like meat, fish, fruit, vegetables, and milk, officials said.

India: Growing Cooperation with ASEAN Not a Counter to China

In an interview with the Jakarta Post's Kornelius Purba on Oct. 6, ahead of the ASEAN/India Summit in Bali, taking place at the same time as the ASEAN+3 Summit, Indian Ambassador to Indonesia Hemant Krishan Singh was asked: "There are fears here over the growing rivalries between regional superpowers like India, China and Japan."

Singh responded: "As far as we are concerned, we view this not as a situation of emerging rivalries, but a situation of emerging partnerships. These partnerships are emerging between ASEAN and Japan, between China and ASEAN, and now also the partnership between ASEAN and India.... We look at it, therefore, as a much more wholesome package of regional partnerships.

"As far as related countries are concerned, we enjoy excellent relations with China—our relationship is growing both in terms of political understanding and in terms of our economic relationship. Both of us are quite clear how important our relationship is for the prosperity, stability, and peace of our Asian continent and beyond. Similarly, India has a long-standing economic relationship with Japan."

Australian Prime Minister Howard Censured Over Iraq

Prime Minister John Howard suffered a rare setback Oct. 7, when the Australian Senate censured him for misleading the public in his justification for sending Australia to war with Iraq. The vote was only the fourth time in more than three decades, and the second in Howard's seven and a half years in office, that a sitting Prime Minister has been censured.

The motion attacked Howard for failing to adequately inform Australians that intelligence agency warnings about a war with Iraq would increase the likelihood of a terrorist attack. It also noted that the Prime Minister had so far failed to produce evidence to justify his claims that in March this year, Iraq possessed stockpiles of completed biological chemical weapons that justified going to war.

The Opposition Labor Party, the Greens, and the Australian Democrats voted together to defeat the government by 33 votes to 30. Greens Senator Bob Brown said Howard was involved in an unprecedented deceit of the nation and deserved censure; that Howard had argued that Iraq's weapons of mass destruction and support of international terrorism threatened Australia. "It has become abundantly clear that the Prime Minister was not just a bit wrong. He was totally wrong," Brown told Parliament. Defense Minister Robert Hill limply said Australian and other governments believed Saddam Hussein's weapons programs posed a very real danger.

Mahathir To Bush and Blair: 'In Japan, They Commit Harakiri'

In an Oct. 4 interview with New Straits Times, Malaysian Prime Minister Dr. Mahathir Mohamad said the CIA's failure to find weapons of mass destruction in Iraq proved that the United States and Britain had concocted a big lie in order to attack Iraq. "I don't believe that they didn't know that Iraq had no WMD," Dr. Mahathir told a press conference. "Even if they had suspected something to that effect they should have allowed UN chief weapons inspector Hans Blix to carry out a full investigation. First they said Iraq could attack them in 45 minutes, then they confirmed that Iraq had WMD. So they attacked Iraq and destroyed the country, killing thousands of innocent people, but now there is no trace of anything at all."

Asked whether the U.S. and Britain should end their occupation of Iraq since all their allegations had been proven wrong, Dr. Mahathir said: "Even when they are wrong they are not going to say that they are wrong. In Japan, normally when they are wrong, they commit harakiri, but Westerners have a different attitude. We are saddened by the fact that leaders who are supposed to be the guardians of world peace are willing to destroy a country and kill its people based on very flimsy evidence, which has now been proven to be untrue."

Asked if the people of Iraq or the world community should initiate action against President George W. Bush and Prime Minister Tony Blair, he said any decision could not be enforced.

China Says Blackouts in West Show Need for Regulation

China is going to amend its electricity law, adopted eight years ago, to make sure that power supplies are stable and to regulate the market. The government also wants to establish an emergency-response procedure for dealing with possible power problems. "One of the lessons we learned from the blackouts in foreign countries, is that we should reinforce the supervision of the system to keep uniformed control over transmission and distribution," said Shao Binren, vice chairman of the State Electricity Regulatory Commission. China has a "fragile" power system, and could suffer black-outs.

NATO To Expand Its Role in Afghanistan

Deputy Secretary of State Richard Armitage assured Afghan interim President Hamid Karzai of more aid and security assistance, in a visit to Kabul Oct. 6. Armitage told Karzai that the U.S.-Afghan-Pakistan commission on security will be meeting in a few days. By way of emphasizing Washington's will to take on the Taliban, Armitage visited Kandahar—considered as the power base of the Taliban and the unofficial capital of the Taliban-led forces—for a few hours.

Almost simultaneously, NATO responded to a German proposal, by agreeing on a limited expansion of its international peace-keeping mission in Afghanistan beyond the Kabul area to the provinces for the first time. A senior NATO diplomat said the 19-nation alliance agreed in principle that it might support other Provincial Reconstruction Teams (PRTs)—international aid workers under military protection—in the light of growing violence against the aid workers by the anti-Kabul Afghan forces.

Opposition to Karzai Is Growing Within the Cabinet

There are indications that Afghan Interim President Hamid Karzai and the U.S. policy towards Afghanistan will face new pressures from within. As of now, Karzai has announced himself a Presidential candidate for the general elections, which Afghanistan, with the help of the United States and NATO, expects to hold next summer. But, within the Northern Alliance, rumblings have become audible. It is likely that either former President Burhanuddin Rabbani, or the Defense Minister Mohammad Qassym Fahim, could also throw in his hat in the ring.

This division within the Kabul government came to light following an editorial in the Tajik-Afghan-run newspaper Payum-e-Mujahid on Oct. 6, which said: "Karzai's government has failed to rebuild this country. We are looking for another candidate to run in his place." Reports indicate that leaders of the Northern Alliance, the mainly ethnic Tajik minority militia leaders, some of whom are members of the Karzai government, have met recently a number of times to discuss the matter. For all practical purposes, this move by the Tajiks will be construed in Afghanistan as an effort to keep the Pushtuns out of power.

According to the United States plan, the newly-written Afghan constitution will be adopted through a 500-member loya jirga (grand council), which will convene for at least 10 days in December. Besides adopting the constitution, the package would include holding general elections, to elect members of parliament and a President. Washington has made known that such an election would be held in June 2004.

South Korea Urges Washington To Be Conciliatory with North Korea

In an Oct. 1 meeting with South Korean correspondents in Washington, S.K. Unification Minister Jeong Se-hyun stressed that U.S. pressure on North Korea would not solve the nuclear dispute, and urged the United States to allow the North a way out of the 11-month-long standoff. Jeong was in Washington for a week to promote South Korea's position with U.S. experts and officials, and with Korean residents. He called on the United States to avoid sending conflicting messages to the North over a security guarantee, and to have a more progressive attitude, by assuring the North that efforts would be made to further detente.

Jeong further cautioned that the U.S.-led Proliferation Security Initiative (PSI) to halt ships at sea, would only invite a much stronger opposition from Pyongyang. "The harder the U.S. pushes ahead with the PSI, the stronger the backlash it will face from the North. The U.S. needs to assure the North that it will do its best to sustain the North's regime stability, rather than present ambiguous positions over the security issue," he said.

'Line 1' Road Between Seoul and Pyongyang Now Open

The opening ceremony of the Chung Ju-yung Gymnasium, named for the founder of Hyundai, took place on Oct. 6 in Pyongyang. Some 1,100 South Koreans were to visit the North to participate in the opening, Hyundai Asan officials said, including relatives of Hyundai Asan's recently deceased chairman Chung Mong-hun (son of the founder), Korean citizens, media, and athletes. For the first time in history, South Korean visitors will enter the North via the just opened overland road on the western Seoul-Pyongyang "Line #1" through the Demilitarized Zone.

UN Envoy: North Korea Will Drop Nuclear Ambitions

The UN Envoy to North Korea, Maurice Strong, said the North would abandon nuclear ambitions if the U.S. addressed its security concerns. Strong spoke Oct. 2 after a meeting with North Korea's Vice Foreign Minister Choe Su-hun at UN headquarters in New York. Strong quoted Choe saying that his government has made it clear, that it is willing to abandon its nuclear weapons program, and abide by internationally agreed inspections. But, Choe reiterated, thus far, Washington's hostile policy has given Pyongyang no choice but to continue nuclear weapons development.

The Bush Administration has set a "red line" that it would not accept North Korea's export of bombs or of its bomb-making abilities, and Choe said his nation would not cross that line. "We have no intention of transferring any means of that nuclear deterrence to other countries," Choe told reporters at the North's mission in New York, New China News Agency reported Oct. 2.

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