Small steps on big issues at Asia forum

Asia's just-completed security forum produced progress on flashpoint issues such as the South China Sea and North Korea, but no game-changing breakthroughs, analysts said. Saturday's ASEAN Regional Forum, comprising the 10 members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) plus a dozen other Asia-Pacific countries, was the climax of a week of hectic diplomacy in Bali. It produced an agreement between China and ASEAN countries on a set of guidelines -- nine years in the making -- governing proposed negotiations on a binding code of conduct for disputed territory in the South China Sea. It also provided a venue for the first meeting in more than two years between the chief nuclear envoys of North and South Korea, providing fresh hope for the resumption of six-party talks on the North's disarmament. US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton attended alongside her Chinese counterpart, Yang Jiechi, as well as the foreign ministers of Japan, South Korea and Russia. ASEAN Secretary-General Surin Pitsuwan said the results spoke for themselves and dismissed doubters who describe the regional bloc as little more than a talking shop. The South China Sea guidelines were a "momentous and historic" landmark which showed that the "ASEAN Regional Forum works", he said. Yang described the deal announced Wednesday as "very important", adding: "a thousand-mile journey begins with the first step". But others were less than impressed. Clinton merely "commended" China and voiced concern that the tensions surrounding the sea remained a threat to regional peace. Philippine Foreign Secretary Albert del Rosario also indicated that Chinese words of comfort meant little when China refused to budge from its position that no other country had any rights in the area. "How can you discuss anything bilaterally when you sit down with them and they say that they own everything?" he said. ASEAN members Brunei, Malaysia, the Philippines and Vietnam stake claims to parts of the potentially oil and gas-rich sea, as does Taiwan. Shi Yinhong of Beijing's Renmin University told AFP the Bali talks had achieved little from a strategic point of view. "Of course Clinton's meeting with Yang, and Yang's meetings with his Vietnamese counterpart and other Southeast Asian foreign ministers, all help to ease the tension of the last few weeks," he told AFP. "But the differences in the positions of the various sides remain." Former ASEAN chief Rodolfo Severino, head of the Singapore-based ASEAN Studies Centre, said China was becoming more aggressive in asserting its claims in the South China Sea because it had greater resources at its disposal. "They have interests that they want to protect. Until they are assured that they won't be attacked or invaded from the southeast, it would be very difficult for them to make any concessions," he said. On North Korea, the United States, Japan and South Korea issued a joint statement after a trilateral meeting in Bali on Saturday in which they encouraged further inter-Korean dialogue. But they said six-party talks would not resume until the North demonstrated its sincerity by meeting its international obligations under UN resolutions, including "addressing" its uranium enrichment programme. Kim Yong-Hyun, professor at South Korea's Dongguk University, told AFP the North-South meetings in Bali were a "first step toward the six-party talks" but the uranium issue would be hard to overcome. "This issue is a very serious obstacle on the path to the six-party talks," he said. The last six-party round ended in a familiar stalemate in December 2008. The North formally abandoned the process in April 2009, blaming alleged US hostility for its withdrawal, and staged its second nuclear test a month later.