EDITORIAL Summit fell well short

The government and the professionals at the Foreign Ministry deserve credit for running a successful and productive Asean Summit last weekend. So does the rest of the country, specifically the extremists within the red shirt movement. The 16 national leaders and their support staff who attended the summit at Hua Hin and Cha-am praised the Thai hospitality. That was a big step up in the short six months since the shameful and botched attempt to hold the summit in Pattaya. Merely by making the summit peaceful, authorities and all the country helped to restore the image of the nation in the eyes of the world. The black eye was largely healed.

The more important question concerns the actual achievements of the summit. Results were mixed. The immediate successes were general agreements and bilateral pacts, rather than grand vision. Despite the talk, there was no clear declaration on setting up a single political or even economic bloc. New Japanese Prime Minister Yukio Hatoyama told the editor-in-chief of Post Publishing that "East Asia is going to lead the world". The summit of 10 Asean leaders and six partners did not go deeply into the specifics.

Indeed, it was Mr Hatoyama who brought the biggest surprise to the talks. When the subject came up of establishing a political group along the lines of the European Union, the new Japanese premier said that the US must be involved. Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd supported this somewhat startling proposal, agreeing with Mr Hatoyama that US relations formed a cornerstone of Tokyo's overall diplomacy.

This seems at first look a disconcerting spanner in the Asean works. The US is both politically and economically an important player in East Asia, and specifically in the Asean region. But it is difficult to see how Washington could be an integral part of an Asean or greater East Asian union, any more than it is part of the European Union. Proposals on how to unite regional nations, adopt a common currency, tear down trade barriers or work towards eventual political union will be delayed, not enhanced by including the US.

There are serious questions about whether such unity ever can be achieved. The rhetoric was grand. But the achievements were more in line with the capabilities of Asean and its six major summit partners - Japan, China, South Korea, India, Australia and New Zealand. Prime Minister Manmohan Singh won an agreement for even better sharing of information and intelligence to combat terrorism. New Zealand Prime Minister John Key signed his country on to the idea of a free-trade zone for the first time. After months of dithering the Australian and Indonesian leaders got together at Hua Hin and quickly agreed to kickstart a cooperative investigation on human trafficking within two weeks.

These and numerous other sideline agreements proved the value of the 15th Asean Summit in Thailand. But serious problems remain that cannot be dealt with by ignoring them. Asean and its partners welcomed the new US diplomatic approach to the regime in Burma. This was correct, but timidly beside the point. The Burmese dictatorship is an enormous embarrassment and political drag on Asean. One important example is the so-called Asean human rights group, made into a toothless and even anti-rights body because of the fear that it might actually speak out against the generals. If Asean truly had a grand vision of future unity, it would issue strong ultimatums to the Burmese generals. In short, Asean will be great and headed towards unity when it deals with its disagreeable problems with the same professionalism it gives its issues of full agreement.