From Third World to First The Singapore Story pdfdrive com

20. Asean-Unpromising Start, Promising Future
Asean was formed in August 1967 amid great uncertainty in the region. In a
low-key ceremony, the foreign ministers of Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines,
Singapore and Thailand met in Bangkok to sign the declaration. The war in
Vietnam was spreading into Cambodia and the region was caught up in
communist insurgencies. I did not set great store by the lofty aims of the group:
to accelerate economic growth, social progress and cultural development; to
promote peace and stability; to collaborate in agriculture and industry and
expand trade. The unspoken objective was to gain strength through solidarity
ahead of the power vacuum that would come with an impending British and later
a possible US withdrawal. Indonesia wanted to reassure Malaysia and Singapore
that, with the end of the Sukarno era, its intentions were peaceful and it had
abandoned Sukarno’s aggressive policies. Thailand wanted to associate itself
with its non-communist neighbours who were members of the Non-Aligned
Movement. The Philippines wanted a forum to push its claim to North Borneo.
Singapore sought the understanding and support of its neighbours in enhancing
stability and security in the region.
It took ten years before we developed cohesion and direction in our
activities, time for the leaders and officials to get to know and take the measure
of each other. We had a common enemy – the communist threat in guerrilla
insurgencies, backed by North Vietnam, China and the Soviet Union. We needed
stability and growth to counter and deny the communists the social and
economic conditions for revolutions. America and the West were prepared to
help us.
The role of President Suharto was crucial for the success of Asean. After
some false starts by pushy Indonesian officials, Suharto moderated the approach
to one diametrically different from India’s vis-à-vis the member countries of
SAARC (South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation). Under Suharto,
Indonesia did not act like a hegemon. It did not insist on its point of view but
took into consideration the policies and interests of the other members. This

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made it possible for the others to accept Indonesia as first among equals.
While Asean’s declared objectives were economic, social and cultural, all
knew that progress in economic cooperation would be slow. We were banding
together more for political objectives, stability and security. Asean succeeded in
creating a sense of stability and security, but as expected, initially there was little
tangible progress. When I addressed the fifth ministerial meeting of Asean
foreign ministers in Singapore in April 1972, I drew attention to the gap between
the large number of projects proposed and the few actually implemented. Each
year there were 100 to 200 recommendations but only 10 to 20 were
implemented.
The fall of Saigon to the communists in April 1975 increased our sense of
the danger from subversion and insurgency. Asean had to undertake economic
development more effectively to reduce domestic discontent. At a bilateral
meeting with Suharto in Bali in September 1975, I tried to persuade him to agree
to set economic targets for Asean at its first summit, which Indonesia would
host, and to go for a trade liberalisation policy, starting with a 10 per cent
reduction by member countries of tariffs on selected items and leading
eventually to a free trade area. I thought he was sympathetic. To make the
summit a success, we agreed to concentrate on issues that would show solidarity
and put aside those which would divide us.
Ali Moertopo, Suharto’s close aide, later told K.C. Lee, our ambassador, that
after the president met me, his technocrats had advised him against free trade.
These words conjured fears of a free-for-all competition in which Indonesia
would become a dumping ground for the goods of other Asean countries,
jeopardising its chances of industrialisation.
Politically, the Asean summit in February 1976 in Bali was a success. Asean
had shown solidarity at a time of great uncertainty. For Indonesia, the host, there
was a bonus. Held in the wake of the crisis caused by its occupation of East
Timor, it improved President Suharto’s international position. However, Suharto
was not at ease at these formal summit meetings. He spoke only Bahasa
Indonesia and could not engage in a free exchange in English. He preferred
bilateral meetings. Then he would speak with animation and vigour in Bahasa
Indonesia and, in the late 1980s, use English words and phrases to get his ideas
across. The next summit was the following year, 1977, in Kuala Lumpur. Again
I could see he was not comfortable, so the next one was not held until 10 years
later, in Manila. By the time it was Singapore’s turn to host a summit in 1992, I
was no longer prime minister and did not attend.

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We did not succeed in lowering tariffs between ourselves, but regular and
frequent meetings led to easy personal and working relations between Asean
ministers and officials. This helped them to solve bilateral problems informally
before they became the subjects of third party notes. Officials and ministers
evolved a style of working which made it possible for disputes to be muted if not
resolved, and for a more cooperative attitude to take hold. They played golf at
their meetings. Between golf swings, they would test out their ideas and
proposals, which could be turned down with less contention than at a formal
meeting. They would also hold singing sessions after their dinners; it was
obligatory for each minister to belt out one of his country’s popular ditties.
Singapore ministers were self-conscious and awkward. They did not do this at
home. The Filipinos, Thais and Indonesians were naturals, singing being a
necessary part of their electioneering. To Western diplomats, such activities may
appear inane. In fact they break the ice between people who, although close
geographic neighbours, are strangers because they had been kept apart from each
other for over a century by different colonial spheres of influence. Through these
regular consultations and meetings, where business and recreation were equally
important on the official agenda, habits of cooperation and compromise evolved.
Asean officials tried to avoid confrontation, seeking consensus as the ideal.
Where consensus was not possible, they settled for a compromise or a promise
of cooperation.
When Asean had to deal with the developed countries, cooperation came
naturally. We learnt the value of political coordination when negotiating with
Americans, Europeans in the European Economic Community and Japanese. On
their part, these industrial countries preferred to deal with us as a group. They
wanted to encourage Asean for its rational and moderate position in international
forums that led to practical outcomes. They wanted other regional groupings of
developing countries to adopt Asean’s pragmatic approach.
One example of Asean’s value to its members was when Australia tried to
change its civil aviation rules. In October 1978 it announced its new Australian
International Civil Aviation Policy (ICAP) under which only Qantas and British
Airways could carry passengers point-to-point between Australia and Britain and
at super-cheap fares. Airlines of intermediate stops, such as Singapore and the
other Asean capitals, were excluded. Passengers were prevented by these special
fares from making stopovers en route. The Australians also planned to reduce
the capacity of the airlines of the intermediate Asean countries and cut the
frequency of Singapore Airlines’ flights between Singapore and both Australia

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and Britain. They wanted to disallow Thai International from taking passengers
from Singapore, an intermediate point, on to Australia. The Australians wanted
to discuss the issue only bilaterally with each affected country, but Asean
economic ministers took a common stand against this. To thwart them, our
Asean partners asked for time to consider the long-term implications of these
changes which would cut out Asean airlines from the trunk route business and
leave us with stunted regional airlines. Then we sorted out our divergent
interests to present a united position.
I concluded that Boeing 747s flying from Australia to Europe would need to
stop either in Singapore, Kuala Lumpur or Bangkok en route to London. Jakarta
was too close to Australia, and Colombo too far; both stops were not economic.
We set out to keep the Malaysians and the Thais on our side. I instructed our
officials to make enough concessions to the Malaysians and Thais so that they
would join us in the fight.
I wrote to Thai Prime Minister General Kriangsak in January 1979 that
Australia’s move was “blatantly protectionist”, that they wanted to exploit our
differences by offering different inducements and threats. He supported me. My
relations with General Kriangsak were close. And we gave enough concessions
to Malaysian Airlines for Malaysia to stay united in Asean.
At first the Australians nearly succeeded in isolating Singapore and dividing
the Asean countries, playing one against the other. But Asean solidarity
hardened after a meeting when the Australian secretary for transport spoke in
tough terms to Asean civil aviation officials. This was reported to Dr Mahathir,
then Malaysia’s deputy prime minister and minister for trade and industry. He
was still angry over a visit to Australia with his prime minister, Tun Razak,
during which they had been harassed by protesters. Mahathir stiffened
Malaysia’s stand against the Australians. From a bilateral dispute between
Singapore and Australia, the ICAP issue escalated into an Asean vs Australia
fight. Harsh words were traded in the press. Annoyed with the offhand attitudes
of the Australian officials, the Indonesians threatened to deny their airspace to
Australian aircraft if they insisted on ICAP. The Australian foreign minister,
Andrew Peacock, visited Singapore to defuse the issue. Australia agreed to let
Singapore Airlines retain its capacity and routing into Australia and allowed the
other Asean airlines to increase their capacities. It was a lesson on the benefits of
solidarity.

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One problem that was to test Asean’s solidarity from 1978 to 1991 was
Vietnam’s occupation of Cambodia. After the Vietnamese attacked Cambodia on
25 December 1978, Raja as foreign minister took the initiative to convene a
special meeting of Asean foreign ministers in Bangkok on 12 January 1979. In a
joint statement, they deplored the invasion and called for the withdrawal of all
foreign forces in Cambodia. When the Vietnamese were advancing in Cambodia
towards its border with Thailand, the situation became dangerous. However, the
Chinese punitive expedition against Vietnam in February 1979 stabilised the
position. The question then was how to prevent the Heng Samrin regime,
installed in Phnom Penh by the Vietnamese, from dislodging Pol Pot’s Khmer
Rouge government from its seat in the United Nations. Their genocide of their
own people had caused worldwide abhorrence and revulsion against the Khmer
Rouge. But if we wanted to keep the Vietnamese from getting international
recognition for their puppet regime, we had no choice but to support the Khmer
Rouge government.
Raja was a born crusader; the Vietnamese invasion of Cambodia provided
him with a cause that stirred his idealism. He wrote powerful short memos,
which we circulated to non-aligned countries, detailing how the big bullying
Vietnamese, the Prussians of Southeast Asia, had pulverised and oppressed the
weak and gentle Cambodians, one-tenth their size. A pleasant personality,
neither arrogant nor meek, Raja was friendly, warm and obviously sincere. His
efforts made it easier for Tommy Koh in New York and ambassadors and
officials from other countries to rally the votes against Vietnam at the UN and
other international gatherings. Best of all, he did this without upsetting Mochtar
Kusumaatmadja, the Indonesian foreign minister, who was under orders from his
president not to isolate Vietnam. Suharto wanted a strong Vietnam to block any
southward expansion of China. Raja and Tengku Rithauddeen, Malaysia’s
foreign minister, together persuaded Mochtar at least not to oppose the Thai
policy and weaken the unity of Asean. The isolation of Vietnam was a decade-
long saga in which Raja played a significant role.
Unexpectedly, a year later, on 24 December 1979, the Soviets invaded
Afghanistan. It was a turning point; as President Carter said, the scales had fallen
from his eyes. The US government became more anti-Soviet and anti-Vietnam.
It also changed the attitudes of our two Muslim neighbours, Indonesia and
Malaysia. Both President Suharto and Prime Minister Mahathir stiffened their
positions against the Soviet Union. They were suspicious of Soviet aims and
their use of Vietnam. India was isolated as the only Asian country recognising

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the Heng Samrin regime.
Our intelligence reports, confirmed by the Thais, showed that the
Vietnamese occupation army of 170,000 were controlling all Cambodia’s
population centres and most of its countryside. The Heng Samrin regime’s
forces, some 30,000, were plagued by low morale and desertions. We were
encouraged by reports of increasing popular resistance to Vietnamese
occupation. The Khmer Rouge forces had withdrawn to the mountainous regions
in the west, near the Thai border. Non-communist resistance groups, which had
been fighting the Khmer Rouge under commanders loyal to the old Lon Nol
government, had coalesced to fight the Vietnamese. Our officials worked hard to
get Sihanouk and Son Sann, Sihanouk’s former prime minister, to form a
coalition government with the Khmer Rouge, but both feared and hated the
Khmer Rouge.
Son Sann’s relationship with Sihanouk was that of commoner and prince. At
a meeting with his followers in Singapore in 1981, Son Sann was told by one of
our officials that Sihanouk wanted to see them immediately. His whole
delegation became nervous, overawed, and could not refuse to attend, even
though Sihanouk no longer wielded any authority.
It took another year before Sihanouk and Son Sann were persuaded by the
Chinese, Thais and us to meet in Kuala Lumpur to sign a formal agreement for a
Coalition Government of Democratic Kampuchea (CGDK). The Thais and
Chinese persuaded the three parties to agree that Prince Sihanouk be the
president, Khieu Samphan the vice-president and Son Sann the prime minister of
the CGDK. I urged them to sign it in Kuala Lumpur, not in Beijing, because that
would have made it appear a Chinese-sponsored coalition which would not
receive wide support in the UN. I thought it important for the Vietnamese to see
that Asean was united in support of the CGDK, that this was not just a Thai-
Singapore project. Ghazali Shafie, the capable Malaysian foreign minister, was
eager to take an active role. I was able to persuade Prime Minister Mahathir to
support it. Once the agreement to form the CGDK had been signed in Kuala
Lumpur, the Indonesians could not disavow it without risking their isolation in
Asean. Sure enough, Mochtar Kusumaatmadja now agreed that Asean must
support the non-communist third force.
Sihanouk’s forte was in propaganda and diplomatic manoeuvring. The real
power players were the Khmer Rouge leaders. Once they had broken out of their
isolation as international outcasts by having Sihanouk and Son Sann associated
with them in the coalition government, they built up their strength. The Chinese

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kept them well supplied with weapons and money. They also had income from
their control of the gem mines and timber logging business along the border with
Thailand.
For the Vietnamese the formation of this coalition government was bad
news. They reacted with venom, describing it as “a monster conceived by
Chinese expansionism and US imperialism”. The Vietnamese foreign minister
had repeatedly declared that the situation in Cambodia was irreversible and non-
negotiable. The Chinese challenged it and the United States helped to oppose it.
As we had hoped, international support for the coalition government increased,
and any prospect of recognition for the Vietnamese puppet regime of Heng
Samrin vanished.
The Vietnamese had been admired by Third World countries as great heroes
after they defeated the Americans in 1975 and captured Saigon. Now they were
defying world opinion, bullying a small neighbour and becoming international
villains. They were embroiled in a guerrilla war which, like the Americans in
Vietnam, they could not win. They were to be bogged down in Cambodia for a
further seven years until they withdrew in September 1989, but continued to be
politically involved until the Paris Peace Accord in October 1991. We spent
three years laboriously smoothing out differences between the Cambodians and
sorting out the positions of China, Thailand and Singapore, in order to bring
along Malaysia and Indonesia and satisfy the Americans that they were not
supporting the Khmer Rouge’s return to power.
Raja and I worked hard to ensure that the United States remained interested
in the region. Whether it was President Carter with Secretary Cyrus Vance, or
President Reagan with Secretary George Shultz, I found them reluctant to play a
major role. They did not want to be involved in another guerrilla war on the
Asian mainland. We managed to persuade them to give modest aid, at first non-
lethal, and later some lethal, to the two non-communist resistance forces. But the
Americans did help to gather votes in the UN against the Vietnamese.
Tommy Koh, our permanent representative at the UN, played a key role in
lobbying and rallying votes. At the UN general assembly in 1982, Sihanouk as
president of the newly formed coalition government appealed to UN members to
restore Cambodia’s independence and sovereignty. They responded by voting
for Democratic Kampuchea with a bigger margin, a total of 105 member states.
By gathering more votes in the UN each year, we made the Vietnamese feel their
growing isolation.
Deng Xiaoping deterred any assault against Thailand by attacking Vietnam

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in February 1979. The price was paid in Chinese blood. Zhao Ziyang spelt out to
me in Beijing in 1980 that by its “counter-action in self-defence” against
Vietnam in 1979, China had forced Vietnam to station 60 per cent of its best
troops along the Sino-Vietnam border. If these men had been free to fight in
Cambodia, he said, the next international conference would have been about a
peaceful settlement of Thailand’s problem with Vietnam, not Cambodia’s. But
Zhao tacitly acknowledged that China alone could not resolve the Cambodian
problem. It needed the United States and Asean to muster international support.
In Washington in June 1981, at a one-on-one meeting with President Reagan,
I spoke of the Soviets making trouble for Southeast Asia. I assured him that
Deng Xiaoping had said that China did not want satellite states around it and was
prepared to accept whoever won in a free vote in Cambodia. This helped to win
Reagan’s support. He was absolutely against the Vietnamese and their puppet
regime.
When I proposed to John Holdridge, the assistant secretary of state for East
Asia and the Pacific, in November 1981 in Singapore, that whoever won in a
UN-supervised election could be allowed to take over Cambodia, and that Heng
Samrin could possibly win, he interjected with vehemence, “I am not sure that
that is acceptable. They are too committed to the Soviets.” His expression, tone
and manner left me with no doubt that a Heng Samrin victory was as
unacceptable to the Americans as to the Chinese. In August 1982 officials from
the US State Department and the CIA told our mission that the United States
would fund the non-communist resistance group in Cambodia by a total of US$4
million for non-lethal aid – food and medicine – to supplement Asean’s efforts.
It was a small beginning but an important breakthrough. The Reagan
administration was getting over its Vietnam withdrawal syndrome and was
prepared, in a subsidiary role, to support the non-communist resistance. This
encouraged Malaysia to supply training and uniforms. Singapore gave the first
few hundreds of several batches of AK-47 automatic rifles, hand grenades,
ammunition and communications equipment.
With help from Britain, we employed British technicians and journalists to
teach 14 Cambodians from the KPNLF to broadcast on short-wave radio from
Singapore, and later to run a medium-wave station near the Thai border. They
learnt how to operate 25kw mobile Japanese transmitters. Together with the
Thais and Malaysians, Singapore trained the guerrilla fighters. In 1983–84, for
the first time, resistance forces spearheaded by the Khmer Rouge continued on
the offensive well into the dry season instead of retreating into Thailand.

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Meeting Secretary of State George Shultz in Singapore in July 1984, I urged
a reconsideration of US policy of small, limited amounts of aid; the current US
policy would result in maximum benefits to China. We were providing the
Khmer Rouge and China with political support which they could not muster on
their own. Chinese military aid had ensured that the Khmer Rouge remained the
strongest force. The United States should invest in the non-communists to help
them build up to their maximum potential, especially after they had shown
promise of fighting capability and were enjoying more support among the
Cambodian people than the Khmer Rouge. Shultz agreed it was worth a try, but
pointed out that US aid had to be sustainable. Unless the amounts were modest,
it would be difficult to get yearly votes in Congress. He knew the sentiments in
the US Congress.
Shultz was right; the US Congress would not support a significant aid
programme. Our representative on the Thai-Malaysian-Singapore-US group that
met regularly in Bangkok to coordinate our programme estimated that the United
States dispensed a total of about US$150 million in covert and overt aid to the
non-communist groups, Singapore US$55 million, Malaysia US$10 million and
Thailand a few million in training, ammunition, food and operational funds. This
was dwarfed by China who spent some US$100 million on the non-communist
forces of Son Sann and Sihanouk and ten times that amount on the Khmer
Rouge.
As it turned out, the Soviet Union was bleeding from the war in Afghanistan
and its massive aid to Vietnam, Ethiopia, Angola and Cuba. By the late 1980s
Soviet aid had stopped and Vietnam was in economic difficulties; it had an
inflation rate of above 1,000 per cent in 1988 and a food crisis. It had to get out
of Cambodia. The Vietnamese old guard gave way to leaders who wanted to
settle the Cambodian issue with China and open up their economy to save it
from collapse. In July 1988 they unilaterally announced their withdrawal of
50,000 troops from Cambodia.
US Congressman Stephen Solarz, in charge of Asia Pacific affairs in the
House foreign relations committee, met me in Singapore and floated the
proposal of a UN force to fill the power vacuum and hold elections. I
encouraged him to pursue it. When Australian Foreign Minister Gareth Evans
took up the proposal formally, Singapore and the other Asean members
supported it. After the final agreement was signed in Paris on 23 October 1991,
the UN despatched an advance peacekeeping force, followed by the UN
Transitional Authority in Cambodia (UNTAC). Sihanouk returned to Phnom

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Penh in November 1991 from Beijing, escorted by Hun Sen who had succeeded
Heng Samrin.
UNTAC was the largest and most costly UN peacekeeping mission to date –
over US$2 billion for a contingent of 20,000 civilians and soldiers. It held
elections successfully in May 1993. Sihanouk’s party, led by his son, Prince
Ranariddh, won the most seats, 58 against the 51 seats won by Hun Sen. But the
Americans had changed their position on the Vietnamese puppet government:
they must have been satisfied that Hun Sen wanted to be independent from
Vietnam and were prepared to let him achieve power. The UN did not have the
strength or will to install Ranariddh in power. It would have required disarming
Hun Sen’s troops and fighting the Khmer Rouge. So the UN brokered a
compromise which made Ranariddh the nominal first prime minister, but left
real power in the hands of the second prime minister, Hun Sen, who was in
charge of the army, the police and the administration.
UNTAC began to leave by November 1993, its limited mission of holding
elections with minimum loss of lives accomplished. Thereafter Singapore
became just an observer of the Cambodian drama. The big powers were dealing
directly with each other to resolve the issue. China was the only country that had
given support to the Khmer Rouge. Premier Li Peng told me in Beijing in
October 1990 that although the Khmer Rouge had made mistakes in the past,
they had also made contributions. In other words, they deserved a place in
government. But once the Soviets agreed with the Americans to end the war in
Vietnam by stopping their military aid, especially oil supplies, China’s influence
on the outcome diminished.
With the Vietnamese out of Cambodia, Asean solidarity weakened. Thai
Prime Minister Chatichai Choonhavan wanted to seize the economic
opportunities in Vietnam’s rehabilitation through trade and investments. He
overrode his foreign minister, Siddhi Savetsila, who said it was not yet time to
make concessions. When Thailand shifted its position, the Indonesians also
moved. They wanted a strong Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia as a bloc to check
any southward thrust of China’s influence.
Singapore had sent a police contingent to help UNTAC. During the conflict
few countries gave aid to the non-communist forces. We did, and our
contribution in arms, ammunition and equipment, plus political and diplomatic
efforts on their behalf, helped to bring about the final outcome. But we knew the
limits of our influence and went along with the UN solution for an interim
government and fair elections. Both these objectives were more or less achieved.

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Hun Sen, his army, police and administrators remained in firm control. Prince
Ranariddh and his FUNCINPEC (the royalist National United Front) ministers
provided Hun Sen and the former pro-Vietnam communists with the
international respectability they needed to get aid. The Khmer Rouge lost out
completely, so great was the international revulsion against Pol Pot for his
genocidal crimes. Vietnam failed to make Cambodia its satellite despite paying a
heavy price for 13 years.
We had spent much time and resources to thwart the Vietnamese in
Cambodia because it was in our interests that aggression be seen not to pay.
Indeed, Indonesia’s costly experience in East Timor underlines this lesson.
Twenty-four years after occupying it, Indonesia had to withdraw after the UN-
supervised referendum in September 1999.
By the mid-1980s Asean had established itself as a rational Third World
grouping and was becoming the most dynamic region of the developing world.
By opening up their economies to trade and foreign investments as
recommended by the World Bank and the International Monetary Fund, the
countries of Asean achieved 6–8 per cent economic growth yearly for more than
a decade. Their economic dynamism made them attractive as economic and
political partners. Regular dialogue started with the Australians and New
Zealanders, followed by the Japanese, Americans and West Europeans. As
Asean grew into a coherent organisation with a common voice on major issues,
more countries wanted to join as its dialogue partners at its annual meetings to
discuss political and economic issues.
The common threat of communism in North Vietnam, China and the Soviet
Union had made for solidarity in Asean. After the collapse of communism,
Asean needed a new common objective that could unite the group. By their
fourth summit in Singapore in January 1992, Asean countries were ready to
promote a free trade area. Singapore had long urged a greater emphasis on
economic cooperation to supplement political cooperation. Our efforts had not
been successful. Suggestions from Singapore for greater economic cooperation
were regarded with suspicion by other Asean countries. As we had a more
advanced economy, open to the world and almost totally free of both tariff and
non-tariff barriers, they feared that we would benefit disproportionately.
In the late 1980s, after China and later India opened up and attracted huge
investments, Asean leaders changed their views. The prime minister of Thailand

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in 1992, Anand Panyarachun, had been a successful businessman after being
head of the Thai foreign ministry. He understood the economics of trade and
investment in an interdependent world. To avoid lingering suspicions about
Singapore’s motives, I advised Prime Minister Goh to get Anand to take the lead
to push for an Asean Free-Trade Area (AFTA). Anand did so successfully, and
the Asean summit in Singapore agreed to establish AFTA by 2008. The date was
later brought forward to 2003 by the Asean economic ministers.
AFTA marked a major milestone in Asean’s evolution. Asean’s goal was to
manage relationships between members who still jealously guarded their
sovereignty, and to help resolve political problems before they erupted into
conflict. AFTA will lead to a greater integration of the economies of Southeast
Asia.
At the 1992 summit in Singapore, Asean leaders decided that its annual post-
ministerial conferences should be a forum for political and security matters. This
led to annual meetings of the Asean Regional Forum (ARF) with Asean’s
dialogue partners (the United States, Japan, Australia, Canada, New Zealand,
Republic of Korea and the European Union) together with China, Russia and
India. It enabled potential adversaries to discuss in a non-combative atmosphere
sensitive disputes like the competing claims to the Spratly islets. It was a change
in policy from excluding to including major powers to discuss security issues in
the region.
Meanwhile, Asean has to digest its enlarged membership. Vietnam was
admitted into Asean in 1995, Myanmar and Laos in 1997, and Cambodia in
1999. The four have some way to go to reach the level of development of the old
members, and to gain acceptability as dialogue partners of the United States and
the European Union.

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