VZCZCXRO2763
RR RUEHDT RUEHPB
DE RUEHBD #0064/01 0520745
ZNY CCCCC ZZH
R 210745Z FEB 07
FM AMEMBASSY BANDAR SERI BEGAWAN
TO RUEHC/SECSTATE WASHDC 3725
INFO RUCNARF/ASEAN REGIONAL FORUM COLLECTIVE
RHHMUNA/HQ USPACOM HONOLULU HI

C O N F I D E N T I A L SECTION 01 OF 04 BANDAR SERI BEGAWAN 000064 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SIPDIS 
 
E.O. 12958: DECL: 02/15/2026 
TAGS: PREL ECIN XE BX
SUBJECT: BRUNEI VIEWS ON ASEAN CHARTER, REGIONAL 
ARCHITECTURE 
 
REF: A. (A) BEIJING 571 
 
     ¶B. (B) BANGKOK 505 
     ¶C. (C) HANOI 128 
     ¶D. (D) MANILA 242 
     ¶E. (E) MANILA 179 
     ¶F. (F) SINGAPORE 156 
     ¶G. (G) VIENTIANE 52 
     ¶H. (H) TOKYO 448 
     ¶I. (I) PHNOM PENH 191 
 
Classified By: Ambassador Emil Skodon for reasons 1.5 (B,D) 
 
------- 
SUMMARY 
------- 
 
¶1. (C)  The Government of Brunei (GOB) views the progress 
made toward an ASEAN Charter as the most important outcome of 
the Cebu ASEAN Summit, since it believes further ASEAN 
integration is necessary for Southeast Asia to keep pace with 
the growing influence of China and India.  The Brunieans see 
such integration as an evolutionary process that will take 
decades, and accept that there will have to be compromises on 
some of the more visionary proposals for the ASEAN Charter. 
They expect, for example, that the final draft of the Charter 
will finesse the contentious idea of establishing a Southeast 
Asian "Union" and instead will focus on measures for further 
developing the three ASEAN "Communities" covering Economic, 
Socio-Cultural, and Security issues; they also see proposals 
for expelling members who violate ASEAN decisions to be 
dropped in favor of provisions for temporary suspension of 
membership. Regarding regional architecture, the GOB is still 
working out its thinking about the different roles to be 
filled by overlapping regional organizations, such as the 
East Asia Summit (EAS) and ASEAN 3.  The Bruneians tell us 
that ASEAN is eagerly awaiting USG proposals for 
commemorating the 30th anniversary of the U.S.-ASEAN Dialogue 
Partnership later this year.  End Summary. 
 
-------------------------- 
FOCUS ON THE ASEAN CHARTER 
-------------------------- 
 
¶2.  (SBU) Ambassador met with Ministry of Foreign Affairs and 
Trade (MFAT) Deputy Permanent Secretary for ASEAN Datin 
Masrainah for a readout of the 12th ASEAN Summit in Cebu, 
Philippines.  Three members of her staff who had been at Cebu 
were also present.  Masrainah said the GOB considered this to 
have been a very significant summit for ASEAN because of the 
leaders' decision to move forward with the drafting of an 
ASEAN Charter on the basis of recommendations made by the 
Eminent Persons Group (EPG).  In the GOB view, adoption of a 
charter that would transform the Association into a 
rules-based organization and provide it with a "legal 
identity" was a prerequisite for further ASEAN integration, 
and a necessary step if ASEAN hoped to be an effective player 
in East Asia. 
 
¶3. (C) According to Masrainah, the GOB viewed the Charter as 
just one, albeit extremely important, step in the long-term 
process of ASEAN integration.  It believed ASEAN should first 
focus on establishing a true economic community.  A deeper 
quasi-political Union along the lines of what the EU is 
trying to create was something for ASEAN to shoot for perhaps 
20-40 years down the road.  In Masrainah's view, the Charter 
should be understood as a "living document" that could be 
amended and built upon as the step-by-step process of 
integration proceeds.  Because the GOB took this long-term 
view, it was willing to compromise now on some of the more 
far-reaching goals the EPG had set out for the draft Charter, 
even though it generally supported the EPG recommendations 
(many of which are closely identified with her boss, EPG 
member and Minister of Foreign Affairs II Lim Jock Seng). 
 
------------------------------------------ 
DELAYING A "UNION," BUILDING "COMMUNITIES" 
------------------------------------------ 
 
¶4.  (C) Masrainah agreed that completing a draft Charter in 
time for the leaders to give their approval by the 13th ASEAN 
Summit in Singapore in November was a daunting task. 
Nevertheless, she was confident that the High Level Task 
Force (HLTF) formed to complete the drafting would make the 
deadline, because "our leaders told us we have to," many 
difficult issues had already been worked out in the EPG, and 
compromises on others were already taking shape.  She 
suspected the Indonesian and Philippine representatives on 
the HLTF, and possibly others, already had first drafts of a 
Charter in their pockets ready to be presented.  (MFAT 
Permanent Secretary I Pengiran Dato Osman will represent the 
GOB on the HLTF.) 
 
BANDAR SER 00000064  002 OF 004 
 
 
 
¶5.  (C) Turning to specific potential compromises, Masrainah 
explained that while some ASEAN members favored reference to 
a Southeast Asian "Union," others, such as Indonesia, 
believed use of that term to be a step too far.  That gap 
could be bridged in the Charter by referring to a "Union" of 
Southeast Asian Nations as a long-term aspiration to be 
achieved at some vaguely defined future date.  The Charter 
could thus sidestep specifics of how and when such a Union 
should be established and instead focus on measures to 
advance ASEAN's three "communities:" the Economic, 
Socio-Cultural, and Security Communities. 
 
¶6.  (C) As for replacement of the consensus mechanism with 
majority voting, Masrainah acknowledged there was a gap 
between ASEAN members who did not want to be held back by a 
blocking minority and others who were wary of subsuming their 
self-defined national interests to majority opinion.  She 
pointed out, however, that ASEAN already had a process for 
building its Economic Community based on less than full 
unanimity:  the "Ten-Minus-X" and "Two-Plus-X" formulas 
allowed ASEAN members to opt out of programs they were not 
ready to implement, while ensuring that no two or more 
countries that wished to pursue economic or trade initiatives 
would be held back.  This approach had worked well, and 
having the Charter explicitly extend it to the ASEAN 
Socio-Cultural Community, which tackled health and other 
transnational issue, should be relatively uncontroversial. 
Political and security issues were probably too sensitive to 
touch immediately, however, and so ASEAN's Security Community 
would have to be preserved as an area where consensus still 
applied for the time being. 
 
------------------- 
EXPULSION AND BURMA 
------------------- 
 
¶7.  (C) Masrainah also outlined a potential solution to the 
vexing question of whether to establish a process for 
expelling members that failed to conform to ASEAN decisions. 
The GOB recognized that a rules-based organization needed a 
way to enforce its rules, but believed that expulsion was not 
a constructive approach to dealing with recalcitrant ASEAN 
states (read:Burma).  One alternative might be for the HLTF 
to recommend that ASEAN emulate the Commonwealth, and create 
the potential for "suspending" members if they were in breach 
of certain minimum criteria, with reinstatement of full 
membership based on attainment of defined benchmarks. 
(Comment: The MFAT is frustrated with Burma but leery about 
coming down hard on Rangoon or moving too far away from the 
ASEAN principle of non-interference in internal affairs, for 
fear of opening the door to critical scrutiny of Brunei's own 
far-from-democratic system of governance.  End Comment.) 
 
¶8.  (C) In a separate, later conversation between Ambassador 
and MFAT Permanent Secretary II Dato Shofry, Shofry said 
bluntly that ASEAN would not be able to deal effectively with 
Burma until it became a rules-based organization with a 
defined process for dealing with members who defied ASEAN 
decisions, through suspension or some other means.  He said 
the Burmese regime currently "knew exactly what it wanted, 
and was getting it," meaning that economic and security 
cooperation with China, and sometimes Thailand, was all that 
really mattered in Rangoon; empty ASEAN declarations meant 
nothing to the generals.  Shofry did not think that a threat 
of ASEAN rules-based sanctions would ever mean anything to 
Than Shwe, but he saw some hope that the next generation of 
regime leaders would be more concerned about maintaining good 
relations with ASEAN, and the specter of suspension from the 
Association might serve as meaningful leverage to affect 
their behavior. 
 
--------------------------------------- 
ASEAN COOPERATION ON CT AND ENVIRONMENT 
--------------------------------------- 
 
¶9.  (C) One of the MFAT officers who represented the GOB at 
drafting sessions of the Cebu Counterrorism Declaration 
attended Ambassador's meeting with Masrainah, and said it had 
not been easy to reach consensus on the final language. 
There was a fair amount of give-and-take, as some countries 
were determined to avoid any declaration that would infringe 
on what they considered to be internal affairs.  In the end, 
the drafters had inserted language limiting cooperation to 
measures "in conformity with the domestic laws of the 
respective parties" and similar restrictions, and settled on 
a political declaration that did little more than codify 
previous statements.  The GOB would now look to an ASEAN 
Working Group of security officials to come up with concrete 
CT follow-up measures in areas such as info-sharing. 
(Comment:  In a separate conversation, the Head of the 
 
BANDAR SER 00000064  003 OF 004 
 
 
Internal Security Department, the GOB internal service, told 
Ambassador that his organization had not been consulted about 
the CT Declaration and was not sure what practical 
implications, if any, it might have.  End Comment.) 
 
¶10.  (SBU) Masrainah and her colleagues singled out the 
environmental declaration at the Cebu Summit as another 
important outcome of the Summit.  Although it too had been 
short on details, they hoped it would give impetus to work on 
a leader's declaration on environmental sustainability for 
the November 2007 ASEAN summit, which would address practical 
measures for alleviating the environmental problems faced by 
ASEAN. 
 
--------------------------------------------- ---- 
REGIONAL ARCHITECTURE -- STILL A WORK IN PROGRESS 
--------------------------------------------- ---- 
 
¶11.  (C) Masrainah said it was clear to participants at Cebu 
that the Chinese were deemphasizing the East Asia Summit in 
favor of the ASEAN-plus-3.  At the EAS, China left the field 
to the Indians and Japanese.  Those two countries were quite 
active in the EAS, as evidenced for example by the Japanese 
presentation of a 4-point plan for energy cooperation.  At 
the ASEAN 3 meeting, on the other hand, China was much more 
eager to take the lead. 
 
¶12.  (C) Commenting that there might soon be a need for a 
non-proliferation regime to limit East Asia institutions, 
Ambassador noted the USG desire to better understand how the 
multiple pieces of regional architecture could fit together. 
Masrainah admitted there was still uncertainty about how they 
would complement each other.  The GOB once thought the EAS 
could become the core of an eventual East Asia community, but 
now accepted that this role would stay with ASEAN 3. 
Masrainah said the GOB's current thinking was that the EAS 
would be more of a leader-driven strategic forum to discuss 
its five agreed priority areas (Energy, Education, Avian Flu, 
Finance, and Natural Disaster Mitigation), while ASEAN 3 
would be increasingly oriented toward practical projects that 
helped build an East Asia community. 
 
¶13.  (C)  In reply to Ambassador's comment about the 
continuing importance of APEC, Masrainah acknowledged the 
value of APEC for addressing economic issues and agreed there 
needed to be more coordination of work on topics like avian 
flu that were being addressed simultaneously in a number of 
regional bodies.  (COMMENT:  Masrainah's relative lack of 
attention to APEC is due to bureaucratic reasons and does not 
reflect the GOB policy position.  Responsibility for APEC 
within MFAT falls to the Multilateral Economics Department, 
which has a separate reporting chain to the Mnister than the 
political departments, such as that headed by Masrainah. 
MFAT and GOB leadership have a keen appreciation for the 
value of APEC and the ARF as regional organizations which tie 
the USG directly into East Asian multilateral institutions. 
END COMMENT.) 
 
--------------------------------------- 
30TH ANNIVERSARY OF U.S.-ASEAN DIALOGUE 
--------------------------------------- 
 
¶14.  (C) Masrainah made a strong pitch for a meaningful 
commemoration of the Thirtieth Anniversary of the USG's 
dialog partnership with ASEAN later in 2007.  The GOB was 
eagerly looking forward to specific USG ideas on 
commemorative events, including a special U.S.-ASEAN Summit. 
Ambassador replied that specific initiatives to mark the 
anniversary were already under consideration in Washington. 
He suggested that the anniversary initiatives that might have 
the most long-lasting impact would be projects that 
successfully delivered long-term concrete results under the 
ASEAN-U.S. Enhanced Partnership, such as the ongoing 
Brunei-U.S. Joint Project to rebuild Aceh villages devastated 
by the 2005 tsunami. 
 
----------------------------------- 
COMMENT:  ASEAN MAKES HASTE, SLOWLY 
----------------------------------- 
 
¶15.  (C) In the Charter negotiations, the ever-conciliatory 
Bruneian MFAT will seek middle ground between ASEAN members 
like Singapore who want an ambitious Charter and others like 
Laos and Cambodia who are comfortable with the status quo. 
GOB leadership has been signaling its support for this 
evolutionary approach to ASEAN integration.  According to the 
Laotian Ambassador here, during the recent visit of Lao PM 
Bouasone the Sultan agreed with Bouasone that ASEAN needed to 
move deliberately, and not precipitously toss aside 
principles like consensus decision-making that had served it 
well over its 40 year history.  Similarly, the non-resident 
 
BANDAR SER 00000064  004 OF 004 
 
 
Austrian Ambassador told us that during a courtesy call he 
paid on Foreign Minister Prince Mohamed during his last visit 
to Brunei, Mohamed shared his belief that ASEAN integration 
will take a very long time to achieve. 
 
¶16.  (C) Those cautious views aside, the GOB recognizes the 
necessity of creating a more dynamic ASEAN.  In a revealing 
comment that indicates what's really driving ASEAN 
integration, Energy Minister (and close advisor to the 
Sultan) Pehin Yahya told Ambassador "India and China and 
moving forward so rapidly, we in ASEAN have no choice but to 
try to keep up." 
SKODON