Only Indonesia And China Find Reasons to Object : For Asians, Battle for Kosovo Is Distant 
International Herald Tribune
April 14, 1999
John Vinocur and Michael Richardson 

About a week into NATO's bombing campaign against Yugoslavia, the United States' recently arrived ambassador to Thailand, Richard Hecklinger, made his first public appearance before a group of journalists. The only question he was required to field about the fighting came from Izvestia's man in Bangkok.

The rest of the questioners, Thai and foreign, stuck largely to Asian issues, in particular the U.S. position on the nomination of a new head of the World Trade Organization. The ambassador spent most of his time attempting to find diplomatic phrasing to explain why a Thai candidate for the trade organization job did not have enthusiastic American support.

With the impact of the Asian economic crisis weighing heavily on most of the region and dominating its attention, the war in Kosovo is not an overwhelming subject of preoccupation. Concern appears to be at a level considerably less than during the Gulf War in 1991, which threatened oil supplies to Asia and slowed its tourism and trade. Although accounts of the Kosovo attacks and the plight of the refugees remained prominent, local articles often dominated newspapers' front pages.

There was a fairly significant exception, however. On the level of principle, some Asian countries, notably China and Indonesia, saw parallels in the Kosovo situation to their own ethnic problems.

The air attacks, which began late in March and have been described in Yugoslavia as a violation by outside forces of state sovereignty, loomed as a potential justification for intervention against China or Indonesia over territory they regard as integral.

But a bit in the same manner that Europe and the Americas have not been dramatically shaken in the aftermath of the Asian economic difficulties, Asia looks mostly at Europe's widest conflict since World War II as a distant event that will not affect it.

"We understand how irritated European countries are toward the president of Yugoslavia, but Yugoslavia is far away from Japan and we have no vital interest in that area," said Yuko Matsuyama, a writer on foreign affairs and professor at Kyoritsu Women's University in Japan.

Perhaps the strongest illustration of this effective distance has been the basically smooth visit of Prime Minister Zhu Rongji of China to the United States despite Beijing's verbal assault on the air strikes as barbaric, a dangerous precedent and naked aggression.

China clearly sees the international intervention on Kosovo without the specific approval of the United Nations Security Council as a circumstance that could one day relate to its own ethnic conflicts in Tibet or the Muslim province of Xinjiang. But it has subordinated the concern to its overall ties with the United States.

On the other end of the spectrum, the air strikes represent for some Asians a reassertion of the United States' willingness to act as global leader. This view projected the show of determination in the Balkans onto the Asia Pacific region, where the American military presence is regarded by many countries as a guarantor of stability.

Taking this line, the Straits Times of Singapore wrote, "The U.S. has played a truly leading role, first by trying to broker peace in Kosovo and then by setting NATO on a course that prevents Belgrade from making an even greater mockery of the tattered peace in that ravaged province."

In Japan, the conflict, while having no direct bearing on national interests, was seen in the context of charged Japanese relations with North Korea and Russia. One newspaper, the Japan Times, suggested that North Korea was drawing dire conclusions from the U.S.-led air strikes. It quoted from a report it identified as coming from Russian analysts that contended that North Korea would speed its missile development and related arms programs while continuing to talk and bargain with Washington.

Another Japanese newspaper, Asahi Shimbun, wrote last week, "Russia cannot be left out of the solution. If the G-8 countries were to become involved in a discussion of the refugee problem, Russia might find it easier to act."

The conflict produced a notable contrast between Indonesia and Malaysia, the two Southeast Asian countries with the greatest Muslim populations, where the West's bombing of Christian Serbia to protect the largely Muslim Kosovo Albanians may be offsetting the impression that there is a NATO bias against Islam.

Under normal circumstances reflexively anti-Western, Malaysia has given its support to the bombing campaign because it said it was necessary to prevent the "genocide" of the Kosovar Albanians.

After criticizing U.S. military strikes in Iraq, Sudan and Afghanistan, Malaysia's backing of the attacks in Yugoslavia was described by its UN representative, Hasmy Agam, as a "reluctant exception" to the idea that all international security issues must be channeled through the Security Council, where the bombing campaign might have been vetoed by Russia or China.

The prime minister of Malaysia, Mahathir bin Mohamad "has always been skeptical about NATO's desire to protect Muslims," said Abdul Razak Abdullah Baginda, executive director of the Malaysian Strategic Research Center. "But now NATO has delivered, so we had to support the bombing."

In Indonesia, which wants to shield the turbulence in East Timor from foreign intervention, an official statement expressed "regrets" at the bombing. The Kosovo crisis should be solved peacefully, not through arms, the government in Jakarta said.

The Jakarta Post found a lesson in Kosovo for Indonesians who have lived with a surge of violence since the departure of President Suharto almost a year ago. It wrote, "Unless we learn to exercise wisdom and restraint in dealing with our differences, and learn to control our narrow group loyalties and interests, it may not be so difficult at all to imagine a tragedy similar to that of Yugoslavia occurring in Indonesia."

Perhaps the most unusual locus of interest in the Kosovo crisis is in Taiwan, which established diplomatic relations in January with Macedonia, the only state in Europe to recognize Taiwan statehood besides the Vatican.

The involvement of Macedonia and the visits of Taiwan representatives to camps for Kosovo refugees there have brought pages of coverage in the island's press.

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