Asean is making a mistake by delaying Cambodia’s membership into the regional grouping, Cambodia’s outgoing Finance minister said Monday.
“Que sera, sera, what will be, will be, but we are ready in all aspects,” said Keat Chhon, before delivering the opening remarks at a roundtable in Phnom Penh to discuss Asean policies.
“We are a Kingdom with a constitutional monarch, with a government, with a parliament, with everything. If they are waiting for a government, we are the legal caretaker government right now,” he said.
Foreign ministers from Asean concluded Saturday that Cambodia would not be able to join this year because the government would not yet be fully formed.
Asean member representatives say that despite a coalition deal struck over the weekend, Cambodia has not gone far enough and must form a government that has been endorsed by the National Assembly before full membership will be extended.
“[We need] to make sure that things are finally in place and there is a government and there is a foreign minister ready to go and participate in Asean,” Mushahid Ali, the Singaporean ambassador to Cambodia, said Monday.
Cambodia, with its application on hold since the July 1997 factional fighting, is the only Southeast Asian nation that is not a member of the grouping.
Asean leaders will meet in Hanoi in December. While foreign ministers from Asean countries are pessimistic about Cambodia’s government being formed before then, Keat Chhon said he was optimistic one could be formed by early December.
Keat Chhon also said that one of the first tasks of the new government would be to ask for a meeting of the Consultative Group for Cambodia, a grouping of foreign governments and major donors.
The finance minister said he hopes the Consultative Group would pledge $500 million to help the cash-strapped economy. The group pledged roughly that amount in grants and low-interest loans in July 1996. But donors cut back after the factional fighting of July 1997.
Keat Chhon also predicted Monday that the new government would stimulate a spurt of private investment.
The roundtable, organized by the think tanks Cambodia Institute for Cooperation and Peace and Friedrich Ebert Siftung, focused on whether Asean should continue its policy of non-interference in the domestic affairs of its members or become more involved.
Non-interference is one of the founding rules outlined in the Bangkok declaration of 1967, but it applies only to member states. In July at the Asean foreign ministers meeting in Manila, the consensus was that non-interference works well for Asean and should not be compromised. The issue, however, is still being debated.
M Rajaratnam, director of the Information and Resource Center in Singapore, said at the roundtable that if Asean did not become more engaged, it could become “irrelevant.”
Both Keat Chhon and Uch Kiman, secretary of state for the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, were concerned that that would mean more involvement in Cambodia’s affairs. Uch Kiman called the concept “rather dangerous.”
Keat Chhon added at the roundtable that the government would not accept any attempt to “internationalize” Cambodia’s internal political problems. He thanked organizations that had helped with the democratization process but took a dig at opposition politicians.
“It is very unfortunate that some of the Cambodian politicians have lost their sense of national value, leadership responsibility and state sovereignty. In order to reach their own political ambitions, they do not hesitate to ask the foreign power to interfere in the country’s internal political affairs.”
The conference continues today at the Hotel Sofitel Cambodiana and is to focus on the “Asean way” and Cambodia.
(Additional reporting by The Associated Press)
