China Urges ARF to Focus on Confidence Building
Chinese Foreign Minister Tang Jiaxuan said at the Sixth ASEAN Regional Forum in Singapore on July 26 that the forum should continue to focus on confidence building and China supports ASEAN in continuing to play a leading role in this aspect.
"There is a huge scope for developing and deepening cooperation in confidence building among ARF participants," Tang said at the one-day forum.
"Efforts in this field should continue in the future," he said.
In the Asia-pacific, peace, development and cooperation continue to be policy objectives of most countries, and multilateral security dialogue and cooperation in the region have maintained a fairly good momentum and confidence-building cooperation in specific areas is being implemented one by one, he said.
But "some destabilizing factors have developed further. The Cold-War mentality has by no means died out in the regional political and security arena," Tang said.
"The tendencies of strengthening military alliances and resorting to intervention against the historical trend are growing. And the arms race has also shown the tendency of coming back," he told the forum, which is being attended by foreign ministers from ASEAN's 10 member countries, its 10 dialogue partners including China, Russia, Japan and the United States, and Mongolia and Papua New Guinea.
ARF members have made useful explorations over the years on how to strengthen cooperation and promote stability under the new circumstances, and these exploratory efforts, though still in the nascent stage, have already produced new security concepts and new security-seeking modalities in embryo, he said.
He listed the main points as the following:
-- First, to abide by the purposes and spirit of the U.N. Charter and other universally recognized norms governing international relations, respect each other and treat each other as equals.
Peace and stability in the Asia-pacific are dependent on many factors, and the most important one is the development of state-to-state relations on the basis of the Five Principles of Peaceful Coexistence. It is all the more important for major countries shouldering important responsibilities for regional and international peace to establish and develop long-term stable and healthy relations with one another on the basis of these principles, he said.
"Asian people have had painful and unforgettable memories of the strong bullying the weak and willful foreign interference into their internal affairs, which should not be the choice for building peace in the Asia-Pacific," he said.
-- Second, to conduct dialogue and cooperation in the spirit of seeking common ground while putting aside differences.
The ARF is made up of countries of different size and they differ in values and social system and do not share exactly the same security interests and concepts. In view of the diversity in the Asia-Pacific, the main issue affecting security in the region is still lack of trust among nations, he said.
Differences should not become obstacles to cooperation, he said. "It is precisely because there are differences that there is a need for countries to increase dialogue and deepen mutual understanding, and herein lie the main element and effective way for security cooperation in the region."
"Without building up confidence, multilateral security cooperation will have no chance of making continuous progress, nor will it be able to truly play its role," he said.
-- Third, to resolve disputes between states through peaceful means.
The Asia-Pacific is faced with traditional and new security problems and the best way to resolve the disputes for good is through peaceful means instead of resorting to force. To strengthen military alliances and build up armament will only aggravate distrust among countries, give rise to new instability and even generate confrontation, he said.
-- Fourth, to seek gradual progress and adopt decisions by consensus.
While people have different views and expectations about the process of security dialogue and cooperation in the Asia-Pacific, its pace of progress and what it should cover, China believes that a more ideal model is one of gradual progress, consensus, taking on easier questions first and accommodating the comfort level of various sides, as advocated by ASEAN, Tang said.
"It is to this model that we should, to a significant extent, attribute the achievements that the ARF has scored in a short period of five years while it took other regional organizations decades to make the same progress," he said.
In short, the multilateral security dialogue and cooperation in the Asia-Pacific should aim at and feature mutual respect instead of the strong bullying the weak, mutual cooperation instead of confrontation; and seeking consensus instead of imposing one's own views on others, he said.
"In view of the afore-mentioned Chinese assessment and the conditions in the region, we maintain that the forum should continue to focus on the building of confidence," Tang said.
China favors and supports the ARF progress toward its established objectives. At the inception of the ARF, China expressed its opinion in favor of a three-stage development plan for the forum and this position remains unchanged, he said.
"As for whether to launch the discussion on the preventive diplomacy, the Chinese side believes that it is necessary to first discuss fully the concept, definition, principles and scope of the preventive diplomacy in the Asia-Pacific region so as to reach a basic consensus," he said.
The whole process of the ARF and all its activities should be consistent with its purpose and nature, namely ARF is a political and diplomatic forum aiming to enhance understanding and trust and promote dialogue and cooperation, Tang added.
China fully affirms the progress made by the ARF in the past five years, he said. "Despite the difficulties it faces, ASEAN is still giving great attention to and vigorously promoting the regional security dialogue and cooperation. We highly appreciate what ASEAN has done and firmly support it in continuing to play a leading role in the forum."
As a member of the region and a permanent member of the U.N. Security Council, China always attaches great importance to peace and stability in the region and has made consistent efforts to maintain them, the Chinese foreign minister said.
China has over the past year taken an active part in various ARF activities, put forward new proposals on confidence building and sponsored some cooperation projects, he said, adding that China has also maintained a good momentum of good neighborliness and friendship with its surrounding countries.
The stability and development of China itself is its biggest contribution to regional peace and security, Tang noted.
The ARF serves as a multilateral consultative forum aimed at promoting confidence building, developing preventive diplomacy and working out approaches to conflicts in the Asia-Pacific region.
Participants at the 22-member ARF, which was initiated in 1993, are discussing regional and international security issues. (Xinhua)
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