Australia edges into Asian talks
International Herald Tribune
April 8, 2005
Thomas Fuller and David Lague 

A decade ago, a prominent Malaysian politician had sharp words about Australia's relationship with East Asia: "If I look at a map, I believe that it says that Australia is not part of Asia," he said.
 
On Thursday, that same politician, Abdullah Ahmad Badawi, now Malaysia's prime minister, was in Canberra exchanging warm compliments with Prime Minister John Howard and announcing that the two countries were starting talks on a free-trade agreement.
 
When a reporter asked Abdullah whether Australia would be invited to a summit of East Asian leaders in Kuala Lumpur later this year, the prime minister said, "My policy has been one of inclusiveness and not excluding anyone."
 
It has been a banner week for Australia's relations with its northern neighbor and its aspirations to play a larger role in the region. On Monday, President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono of Indonesia hailed a "new era" of relations with Australia during a visit to Canberra.
 
Two decades of bad blood are being cleansed with promises of closer economic cooperation as well as a deal signed last week with Indonesia to strengthen relations between the police and the military forces from the two countries.
 
Analysts say the new generation of Southeast Asian leaders is more interested in cementing solid commercial ties with Australia than continuing cycles of recrimination that have existed for two decades and have often had racial overtones.
 
"Everyone knows that relations between Malaysia and Australia were lukewarm to say the least," said Abdul Razak Abdullah Baginda, executive director of the Malaysian Strategic Research Center in Kuala Lumpur.
 
"There has been a real atmospheric change," Abdul Razak said. "Abdullah has a totally different attitude."
 
Analysts say the larger question for Australia is whether Asian governments will move beyond trade and business ties and, quite literally, offer Canberra a seat at the table at their political meetings.
 
The first real test will come Sunday in the Philippines when the foreign ministers of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations meet to discuss what countries should be allowed to attend the inaugural East Asia Summit meeting in December.
 
One Australian politician compared the meeting to the gathering of European leaders in Rome in 1957 that led to what is today the European Union.
 
This may be hopeful: East Asian countries have agreed to study the possibility of a free-trade zone, but real negotiations are a long way off.
 
Yet Australia's participation would have important symbolic value for, if nothing else, the image of an Australian leader - and an ethnic European at that - sitting around the same table with his Asian counterparts.
 
One Asean diplomat who has attended high-level preparatory meetings in recent weeks said Thursday that most Southeast Asian governments seemed eager to invite Australia and New Zealand to the summit. India is also a possible participant.
 
"Most countries will support a more inclusive East Asian summit," the diplomat said. Japan, which will participate in the meeting, has lobbied for the inclusion of Australia and New Zealand, while China is said to be more ambivalent.
 
Yudhoyono publicly called for Australia's participation during his visit while Abdullah was more cautious, saying that Asean ministers would decide.
 
The Asean diplomat cautioned that leaders might want to put off the decision about Australia and New Zealand's participation until next year after the inaugural summit.
 
Whatever the outcome, the current atmosphere has come a long way since the days when the former prime minister of Malaysia, Mahathir bin Mohamad, called Australian soldiers "high handed and belligerent" and Australian journalists "congenital liars" - and when Australian politicians called Mahathir "recalcitrant" and "a barbarian."
 
Mahathir derided Australia as Washington's "deputy sheriff" and insisted that a country aligned with the West, and predominantly peopled by the descendants of European migrants, had little to offer the rest of Asia. Relations also suffered in 1986 when two Australians were hanged in Malaysia for trafficking heroin.
 
In his 22 years in office, Mahathir visited Australia only once, in 1984, and continually rebuffed Australian efforts to be included in regional groupings.
 
From an Australian standpoint, Abdullah's willingness to travel to Canberra, the first visit of a Malaysian leader in 21 years, is a vindication of sorts for Howard, who has consistently argued that Australia's formal alliance with the United States should not preclude close political ties with regional neighbors.
 
A free trade agreement would also deliver a considerable boost to an economic relationship that has been growing strongly in recent years. Two-way trade in goods and services is now about 9.5 billion Australian dollars, or $7.2 billion.
 
Australia's place in Asia has grown hand-in-hand with its supplies of raw materials and energy to the major manufacturing powers of Northeast Asia, including Japan, China, South Korea and Taiwan.
 
But few analysts expected any improvement in ties when Howard, an anglophile and strong supporter of Australia's constitutional monarchy, took office in 1996.
 
However, since Mahathir's retirement in 2003, ties have been improving and political analysts in Canberra see the Abdullah visit as proof that the Malaysian government acknowledges that a constructive relationship with one of the Asia-Pacific regions biggest and most robust economies was also useful to Malaysia.
 
"Mahathir's carping attitude was not doing either country much good, to be honest," said a Canberra-based political analyst, Allan Behm, a former senior Australian defense official.
 
Behm said Abdullah had a broader understanding of the benefits of cooperation with Australia. As a former minister for defense, Badawi had been closely involved in the workings of the Five Power Defense Agreement, a 1971 security pact between Australia, Britain, New Zealand, Malaysia and Singapore.
 
In practice, this agreement now means that Australia provides the bulk of the security assistance to Malaysia.
 
Abdullah "doesn't see us as quite the arrogant, insensitive racists that Mahathir thought us," Behm said.
 
Australia's relations with Indonesia, too, have sharply improved since 1999, when Australia led a United Nations peacekeeping force to East Timor after pro-Jakarta militias went on a rampage. East Timor subsequently gained independence, but lingering resentment remained in Jakarta over Australia's role in this separation.

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