Aftermath News

Bloomberg | Nov 20, 2007

By Shamim Adam and En-Lai Yeoh

Nov. 20 (Bloomberg) — Leaders of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations today agreed to eliminate trade barriers for goods and services in an attempt to create a European Union-modeled economic community by 2015.

The 10 members of the group adopted an Asean Economic Community Blueprint that also promises investors better dispute- settlement mechanisms and more transparent and consistent rules.

Member nations say integration, styled after the EU without a common currency or passport-free travel, is essential for the group as it competes with China and India for exports and investments. The Asean countries have a combined gross domestic product of over $1.03 trillion and a population of about 570 million.

“Businesses say we have a five-year window in terms of catching up with China and India,” said Robert Yap, chairman of the Asean Business Advisory Council. The blueprint, he said, “is to make sure we are there on time to compete.”

The report sets out commitments, targets and timelines for a single market and production base with an unrestricted flow of goods, services investments and skilled jobs.

Export-Dependent

Southeast Asia’s developing economies are almost twice as reliant on exports as the rest of the world, with more than 60 percent of overseas sales ultimately destined for the U.S., Europe and Japan.

“Simple, harmonized and standardized trade and customs, processes, procedures and related information flows are expected to reduce transaction costs in Asean,” the blueprint states. That “will enhance export competitiveness and facilitate the integration of Asean into a single market for goods, services and investments and a single production base.”

Asean leaders today also signed a charter, the first legally binding document since the group’s founding 40 years ago. Members found to be in violation of its rules will be referred to the leaders of the 10 Asean countries for action. The group will still rule by consensus, having rejected proposals to add voting, expulsion or sanctions on its members.

The charter will “allow us to evolve Asean into a community,” Malaysian Foreign Minister Syed Hamid Albar said in an interview.

`No Restrictions’

The group plans to remove “substantially” all restrictions on trade in services for four industries, including air transport, health care and tourism by 2010, the report said. Trade barriers in logistics services are expected to be removed by 2013, while all other services industries will be opened two years later.

“There will be substantially no restriction to Asean services suppliers in providing services and in establishing companies across national borders within the region, subject to domestic regulations,” the report said.

Asean also plans to “remove or relax” restrictions on capital flows to promote the development of its capital markets.

“A free and open investment regime is key to enhancing Asean’s competitiveness in attracting foreign direct investment as well as intra-Asean investment,” the blueprint stated. “Sustained inflows of new investments and reinvestments will promote and ensure development of Asean economies.”

Dispute Mechanism

The group aims to attract investment by providing “enhanced protection” such as dispute settlement mechanisms, and developing more transparent and consistent rules and procedures, it said.

Still, some analysts say the gaps in development between the group’s richest and poorest members may slow the pace of integration, making the 2015 target an unrealistic one.

“The probability is somewhat low it will happen by 2015,” said V. Anantha-Nageswaran, head of investment research for Asia and the Middle East at Bank Julius Baer in Singapore. “Given the relative unevenness of growth between them, I’m not entirely sure they will be able to keep to the deadline.”

One such area where the blueprint’s enforcers may have difficulty in opening up industries would be in financial services, said Citigroup Inc.’s Piyush Gupta.

“Countries say `given our state of development, there is no way we can give up control of our monetary, fiscal and macroeconomic policies,”’ Gupta said. “That’s what underlines people’s worries and fears and why financial integration doesn’t proceed as quickly as you want it to.”

Transport Networks

Some progress has been made in infrastructure development, where the group said it will boost cooperation to develop better land, sea and air transport networks.

The Southeast Asian nations agreed earlier this month to fully liberalize aviation services by 2015, which will permit Singapore Airlines Ltd. and Malaysia’s AirAsia Bhd. to have more flights within the region.

“An efficient, secure and integrated transport network in Asean is vital for realizing the full potential of the Asean free- trade area,” the report said.

Asean also highlighted the completion of a 5,500-kilometer railway line linking Singapore and the Chinese city of Kunming as a priority. It will also work together to ensure a secure and reliable supply of energy in the region.

Asean’s members are Indonesia, Thailand, Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei, the Philippines, Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam.

Xinhuanet | Nov 20, 2007

BEIJING, Nov. 20 (Xinhuanet) — In order to be more ready to face challenges, the Association of Southeast Nations (ASEAN) signed a Charter on Tuesday, which transforms the ASEAN into a rules-based legal entity like the European Union.

The Charter was signed by the bloc’s 10 leaders in Shangri-La Hotel in the downtown of Singapore. Under the Charter, the member states of ASEAN are Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.

Here are a rough guide of the Charter:

Legal personality

In order to be more ready to face challenges, ASEAN needs a legal foundation and institutional framework for building up the regional integration, the Charter says.

“ASEAN, as an inter-governmental organization, is hereby conferred legal personality,” says the Charter. (ASEAN to be conferred legal personality )

Single market and elimination of all barriers

ASEAN leaders promised in the Charter to create a single market and production base with effective facilitation for trade and investment in which there is free flow of goods, services and investment. They also promised to gain freer flow of capital. (ASEAN vows to create single market in the region )

According to the Charter, ASEAN will adhere to multilateral trade rules to eliminate all barriers to regional economic integration in a market-driven economy.

The Charter says that ASEAN will enhance consultations on matters seriously affecting the common interest of the group.(ASEAN plans to eliminate all barriers to regional economic integration )

Authorities turn Sydney into a prison camp and refuse “permission” for main organizations to march, characterizing protest as “an unlawful act”

Prison Planet | Sep 4, 2007

by Paul Joseph Watson

Authorities have effectively outlawed protest at the APEC summit in Sydney Australia by refusing to grant “permission” for groups to march anywhere in the city, while quarantining part of the central business district within a 3-mile wide security fence.

Around 100 protesters were able to stage a demonstration outside Sydney’s main railway station today, but they were heavily outnumbered by police and media.

New South Wales (NSW) state Police Commissioner Andrew Scipione characterized the protests as “an unlawful act” during a press conference and urged others not to get involved.

The Stop Bush Coalition, which promises to bring around 20,000 protesters to the summit, have repeatedly been rebuffed by the authorities in their attempts to get “permission” to stage a march on their planned route, which is still several city blocks away from where the summit leaders will be meeting.

This what happens when laws are changed that mandate government “permission” to be able to protest the government, which is mirrored in Britain under the Serious Organized Crimes Act , the very inalienable right to free speech and protest itself is effectively outlawed or sidelined into obscurity by means of “free speech zones”.

“Police took court action on Tuesday to stop the march. The court adjourned the case until Wednesday, saying protesters had insufficient time to prepare for the case,” reports Reuters .

“We cannot sit on the sidelines while a warmonger like George Bush comes to our country,” protest organiser Alex Bainbridge told the “Stop Bush 2007″ rally.

?We have put several route options to the police for the march and they have rejected all of them.?
“We are not going to be intimidated, we cannot stop defending our democratic rights, defending our civil liberties,” Bainbridge said.

Protesters and the public have been cautioned to stay away as Prime Minister John Howard took the unprecedented step of warning demonstrators against violence via You Tube video , while loyalists from the Murdoch-controlled Aussie media empire referred to protesters as “urban terrorists”.

However, it seems the only people gearing up for a fight are the police themselves.

Over 5,000 have been drafted in to patrol the city, including military troops as well as secret service personnel. Accredited photo journalists have been threatened for simply taking pictures of the security fence and residents are being harassed and asked to show their ID at checkpoints throughout the city. Armed jet fighter and helicopter gun ship patrols are whizzing around the skies as Australians get a chance to experience the kind of hellish measures that the would-be dictators attending APEC would like to impose on a permanent basis.

“Naturally, the Australian media, virtually across the spectrum, have repeatedly stated Howard’s hallucinatory claim that the presence of President Bush is not the reason why Sydneysiders and tourists are being asked for their ID, searched, detained for questioning, forced to move through the city via security checkpoints and have a massive ’steel wall’ dividing their city in half,” reports the Orstrahyun blog .

No, don’t blame Bush, says Howard, on a daily basis, blame instead the threat posed by “violent protesters.”
Howard doesn’t seem to understand that the vast majority of the public know he is speaking absolute twaddle, and are all too aware that he is actively participating in a massive anti-protest psychological operation. A psy-op aimed solely at scaring away the tens of thousands of people who wish to publicly march in Sydney’s streets against the corpse-strewn foreign policies, and soon to be Australia-centric policies, of President George W. Bush.

Though no information on any credible threat of “violence” has been revealed, the government brazenly played up the imaginary menace in order to turn the city into a quasi-concentration camp.

Police revealed a most wanted list of just 25 names that they warned to stay away from Sydney, hardly an army of violent anarchists hell-bent on destruction.

Though if there is to be any trouble, we would be loathe to forget that the “black bloc” anarchist group has been completely infiltrated by the authorities and is routinely used as a front within which agent provocateurs instigate violence to give riot police the excuse to crackdown on peaceful protesters.

Last month, police in Canada were outed as they posed as violent anarchists during the SPP summit in Montebello. A You Tube video caught the undercover cops disguised as masked protesters wielding rocks and authorities were later forced to admit that they had infiltrated agents as a means of gathering intelligence on the protest groups.

Scoop | Sep 4, 2007

by David T. Rowlands

Three-metre high security fences, heart-stopping tasers, a bone-smashing water cannon, mobile prison buses and — perhaps most disturbing of all — the threat of automatic incarceration for randomly abducted protesters? Welcome to the growing international phenomenon of “population control”. The Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum is in Sydney, and NSW security chiefs are telling you to follow orders, shut up and stay away. Prison cells are ready and waiting if you fail to heed the warning.

Perhaps Sydneysiders should not be surprised that harsh “crowd control” measures are accompanying the 2007 APEC meeting. APEC has always been the whip-wielding road show of the “new world order”, pushing a neoliberal free trade agenda and ruthlessly crushing dissent along the way. The harbour city’s residents are now getting a taste of what the disenfranchised masses of the colonised developing world regularly encounter — organised mass repression by militarised state security forces at the behest of imperialist masters.

Since 1993, when the first APEC meeting convened in Seattle, APEC has served the interests of major transnational corporations bent on securing unrestricted access to the natural and human resources of the developing world.

APEC purports to be a forum for global problem-solving and it is true that various peripheral, feel-good issues are debated from time to time. Yet, this is superficial gloss to cover the fundamental purpose of APEC meetings, which is to ensure that the poorer nations of the Asia-Pacific region remain de facto colonies of the wealthy.

Of course this is not an openly stated goal. But one need only observe the destructive impact of “free trade” policies to deduce their true intent: peasant farmers and indigenous groups thrown off their land by mining companies, the elimination of affordable generic medicines, and slave labour regimes in de-unionised sweat shops.

The one thing that can never be debated at APEC is the legitimacy of the free trade agenda, which has become a shibboleth in the post-Cold War era of capitalist triumphalism.

Free trade, according to its fundamentalist neoliberal proponents, is character-building medicine for the developing world. A liberalised, deregulated economy will teach the lazy and uneducated general population some fiscal restraint and responsibility. Free trade also fosters the right sort of “democracy”. Once locked into the US-dominated international financial system, it is far less likely that client regimes will entertain the thought of pursuing alternative development strategies.

Successive US governments, all beholden to the unaccountable private tyranny of corporate power, have ensured that the liberalisation of trade and investment remains the staple agenda item of every APEC meeting.

The Bogor goals of 1994 established APEC’s commitment to “free and open trade and investment in the Asia-Pacific by 2010 for developed economies and 2020 for developing economies”. At subsequent APEC meetings, soothing-sounding euphemisms such as the “Osaka Action Agenda”, the “Manila Action Plan”, “Early Individual Action Plans”, “Voluntary Sectoral Liberalisation” have been employed to legitimise the rising tide of imperialist globalisation.

The Sydney meeting, September 2-9, will undoubtedly produce another contribution to the neoliberal mantra — another detailed plan, another mission statement, another fist in the face for the impoverished of the world.

It is no coincidence that the expensive ($600,000), lumbering, 12,000-litre water cannon aimed at anyone who dares to be on the street during the APEC curfew was manufactured in the US. The Bush administration has funnelled vast amounts of public money into direct subsidies and tax breaks for manufacturers of such “riot control” equipment. As a result, the so-called “security” industry is rapidly becoming one of the most profitable export sectors of the US economy.

Chemical irritants, stun guns, crowd barriers and a water cannon are tools of a foreign policy that cajoles, threatens and bullies governments around the world into getting tough with dissidents who question the morality, legitimacy and sanity of the US-led neoliberal ascendancy.

One of the leading US exporters of riot control vehicles is Security Pro US (SECPRO). SECPRO’s website proudly claims that its vehicles, which “include the latest in water cannon technology” are “helping police forces around the world”. SECPRO vehicles have already been used to crush protests in Europe, Africa, the Americas, Asia and the Middle East. When will Australia be added to the list?

Protesters who dare to point out that free trade is creating massive disparities between rich and poor in the Asia Pacific region will be dealt with. Anyone who suggests that environmental degradation, nuclear proliferation, Indigenous marginalisation and genocidal wars of imperialist conquest are an unacceptable price to pay for “ecomomic growth” will be silenced.

Such talk will not be tolerated by the neoliberal elite, much less if it spills out onto the streets as the limos glide by. With the corporate media enthusiastically blaring on about “violent protesters” taking over the city, dissent has now effectively been criminalised.

Accepted without question by many corporate media outlets is the corresponding militarisation of police, a development that may well have profound consequences for us all long after the slick-suited 21 world leaders have jetted home.

This is all staged by the globalists to make China the new superpower and the “model state” of the New World Order system. The Bush crime family is literally selling America out to Communist China while they reap the profits. Next to the Rockefellers, they are probably the most evil and treasonous family in American history and completely deserve the wrath that will surely overtake them eventually.

PW

. . .

Armitage said there was a danger of Chinese leadership in Asia surpassing that of the US.

Times of India | Sep 3, 2007

SYDNEY: US President George W Bush is so preoccupied with Iraq he is neglecting Asia and allowing China to take a greater leadership role, a former senior US official said in remarks published on Monday.

“In every measure, China is making real hay right throughout Asia,” Richard Armitage, Bush’s former deputy secretary of state told The Australian newspaper in an interview.

“Right now, we’re just so preoccupied with Iraq that we’re ignoring Asia totally.”

Bush is cutting short his attendance at a major Asia-Pacific summit in Sydney this weekend to return to Washington in time for reports to Congress on progress in Iraq by top US general David Petraeus.

Armitage also criticised Secretary of State Condoleeza Rice for skipping two out of three annual meetings which bring the US together with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).

The Bush administration had radically underestimated the importance of Asia, he said.

“In almost every measure, military budgets, population growths, the need for raw materials, our interests will force us back to Asia.”

Armitage said there was a danger of Chinese leadership in Asia surpassing that of the US.

Australian Prime Minister John Howard, a strong supporter of Bush’s Iraq policy, was reportedly bitterly disappointed that the US president will miss the second day of the two-day summit.

In an attempt to make amends, Bush has extended his state visit ahead of the APEC summit.

. . .

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War games staged under the flag of Shanghai Co-operation Organization

Chinese soldiers march past the flags of SCO members during a parade to mark the end of joint military exercises in Russia yesterday.

Reuters | Aug 18, 2007

by GUY FAULCONBRIDGE

Russia and China staged their biggest joint exercises yesterday but denied this show of military prowess could lead to the formation of a counterweight to NATO.

The war games were staged under the flag of the Shanghai Co-operation Organization (SCO), a regional grouping that includes Russia, China and four central Asian states.

Russian President Vladimir Putin, who watched the war games with Chinese President Hu Jintao, dismissed comparisons with NATO.

“Today’s exercises are another step toward strengthening the relations between our countries, a step toward strengthening international peace and security, and first and foremost, the security of our peoples,” Putin said.

Fighter jets swooped overhead, commandos jumped from helicopters onto rooftops and the boom of artillery shells shook the firing range in Russia’s Ural mountains as two of the largest armies in the world were put through their paces.

The exercises take place against a backdrop of mounting rivalry between the West, and Russia and China for influence over central Asia, a strategic region that has huge oil, gas and mineral resources.

Russia’s growing assertiveness is also causing jitters in the West.

Putin announced at the firing range that Russia was resuming Soviet-era sorties by its strategic bomber aircraft near NATO airspace.

Commanders said the aim of the exercises - involving 7,500 troops from SCO member states - was to practise joint operations for putting down a militant uprising.

Moscow has been fighting a separatist insurgency in its southern Chechnya region, while China says it is fighting Uighur Muslim rebels in its westerly province.

“I am convinced that the current exercise will definitely serve to stimulate the SCO to play a bigger role in the struggle against terrorism in the region,” Hu said.

Asked by a reporter if the SCO was turning into a counter-balance to NATO, Putin said: “That is not the case.

“The military aspect is not dominant and not the main thing. … The SCO is an organization that deals with questions of a political character and an economic character … and the economic aspects are at the forefront,” he said.

Marcel de Haas, an expert on security in ex-Soviet countries, said the war games, and the presence of SCO heads of state, was “another indication that they are slowly but surely working toward being a mutual security organization.” “We cannot neglect them. We have to pay attention.” But the senior research fellow at the Netherlands Institute of International Relations Clingendael said the SCO was unlikely to turn into an anti-Western club.

“Russia wants to use the SCO for its anti-Western (aims) but the others will not allow it.” Building the alliance might be hindered by the ambiguous relations between Russia and China.

Moscow wants to supply energy to China’s booming economy and sell weapons to its military, but is also wary of Beijing’s growing economic and military might.

. . .

Related

Shanghai Cooperation Organisation
The Shanghai Cooperation Organisation (SCO) is an intergovernmental mutual-security organization which was founded on June 14, 2001 by the leaders of the China, Russia, Kazakhstan, Kyrgyzstan, Tajikistan and Uzbekistan. The organization has denied that it is an emerging military bloc, but western speculation suggests that the SCO serves as a possible counterbalance to NATO.

RIA Novosti | Aug 17, 2007

CHEBARKUL (Urals), August 17 (RIA Novosti) - Russian President Vladimir Putin dismissed as irrelevant allegations that the Shanghai Cooperation Organization (SCO) is a military bloc, and highlighted its increasing role in economic cooperation.

The group, comprising Russia, China, and four ex-Soviet Central Asian states concluded Friday a large-scale anti-terrorism exercise in Russia’s south Urals. The SCO, seen as a counterweight to U.S. influence in Asia, was recently dubbed the “Anti-NATO” by Russian daily Izvestia.

Putin said after the exercises: “The SCO today is an organization tackling political and economic issues, and the economic aspect is increasingly coming to the foreground.” Comparisons with NATO are entirely untrue, he said.

Although the “Shanghai Six” was originally set up to deal with border disputes that emerged following the breakup of the Soviet Union between the newly-independent states and China, these problems have since been resolved, he said.

The Russian president said that cooperation between member states’ militaries is more anti-terrorist than military in nature. Moscow is still faced with the threat of terrorism, and will continue counter-terrorism efforts both at home and abroad, in conjunction with its partners, he added.

The Peace Mission 2007 exercise began in the Chelyabinsk Region on August 9, involving around 7,500 servicemen from SCO member states Russia, China, Kazakhstan, Tajikistan, Kyrgyzstan, and Uzbekistan. SCO leaders attended the final day of training.

Putin declared the drills a success, and said the countries’ troops had carried out exercises without a single hitch.

A Defense Ministry official said earlier Friday that the exercises, the first in which military units of all SCO member states have participated, have cost Russia 2 billion rubles ($80 million).

The bloc’s leaders traveled to Russia from the SCO summit held in Kyrgyzstan’s capital, Bishkek, on Thursday. At the meeting in Bishkek, the Russian president had proposed holding counter-terrorism exercises on a regular basis, while highlighting the need for a multi-polar system for international security, and speaking out against attempts by any one nation to take global security into its own hands.

In the summit declaration released Thursday, SCO leaders said no outside assistance was needed to ensure regional stability and energy security, and that the organization’s regional antiterrorism structure had sufficient resources to fight terrorism, separatism and extremism in Eurasia.

Member states pledged to push forward with creating a joint mechanism to counter threats to regional peace, stability and security, and to deepen cooperation in fighting drug trafficking and illegal migration.

Telegraph | Apr 20, 2007

“We operate here under directives which emulate from the White House…The substance of the directives under which we operate is that we shall use our grant making power to alter life in the United States such that we can comfortably be merged with the Soviet Union.” 

- Rowan Gaither, President of the Ford Foundation to Congressional Reese Commission investigator Norman Dodd, 1954

The Chunnel linked the UK to the EU. The Africa-Europe tunnel also brings the African Union into the sphere of the EU. The NASCO Highway makes the North American Union possible and this tunnel between Alaska and Russia (soon to be absorbed into either the EU or the Asian Union) is designed to link up the Pan American Union with the Asian Union. In any case, all these projects and more are being used to set up trilateral global government and should be viewed with great suspicion by anyone who wants to keep their freedom and independence.

PW

The Kremlin is considering reviving a 19th century dream of linking Russia and the United States by building the world’s longest railway tunnel under the Bering Strait.
 
Government ministers will analyse a pre-feasibility study prepared by the Russian Academy of Sciences at a conference in Moscow next week. Despite its vast cost - estimated to be in the region of £32.5 billion - the project’s authors are confident of securing the backing of both the Russian and the American governments.

“This is one of the very few projects that can cardinally change the development of Russia’s far east,” said Viktor Razbegin, the deputy head of research at the economy ministry. “The chance for the implementation now is pretty good.”

Mr Razbegin claimed that in 1998 the United States, Russia and Canada were close to a deal when it had to be abandoned because of the rouble crash.

In fact, there have been many proposals to link eastern Russia and Alaska.

advertisementIn 1890, the governor of Colorado, William Gilpin, envisaged a bridge across the Bering Strait, an idea that was revived - and put to one side - in the 1940s.

It came up again in the 1960s as part of a massive project, which also included a bridge across the Strait of Gibraltar, to link five continents. The dreams were all stillborn, and it is not hard to see why. The Bering Strait is one of the world’s most inhospitable locations.

Mr Razbegin’s proposed 60-mile-long tunnel - which would surface twice on the Diomede islands halfway across the strait - is twice the length of the Channel tunnel. Yet that, in some ways, is the easy bit. The nearest major road to the tunnel’s proposed Russian entry point, at Provideniya, is 1,000 miles away.

Alaska has no direct rail link to either Canada or the rest of the United States. This would mean building a 3,700 mile-long line between Yakutsk in Siberia and Fort Nelson in British Columbia.

Despite the obvious challenges, Mr Razbegin was upbeat yesterday.

“The trans-Siberian railway is 9,200 km [5,700 miles] and took Russia just seven years to build single handed,” he said, estimating that the project would take about 12 years to complete.

According to the plans, the tunnel would carry both rail passengers and cargo. It would also carry electricity and fibre-optic cables, while an oil and gas pipeline could be laid, if the governments agreed.

It is unclear, however, who would fund the project. Thanks to booming oil prices and vastly improved energy production, the Russian government is much wealthier than it was during the economic turmoil of the late 1990s. A transport link would boost trade further.

There have been suggestions that the Kremlin could also seek financial support from Roman Abramovich, the owner of Chelsea football club, who is governor of Chukotka, the remote region where the tunnel would begin.

But most analysts say it would be much harder to find American backers from the private sector willing to invest in so risky a project.

Dawn | Jan 13, 2007 

Southeast Asian leaders agreed at their annual summit on Saturday to create a tighter political bloc, turn their region into a free-trade zone by 2015 and fight harder against terrorism and poverty.

In a major break with its consensus-based past, the 10-country body has agreed to discuss a plan for a more cohesive organisation able to sanction — or even expel — members that do not follow its rules.

The leaders also signed a counter-terrorism pact legally binding their countries to share information, and allowing for joint training aimed at stemming terror and cross-border crime.

They agreed on the protection of millions of migrant workers, and vowed to shift energy use from fossil fuel to biofuels.

Philippine President Gloria Macapagal Arroyo stressed the need to bolster free trade within Asean, which was created in 1967. “ASEAN is committed to expanding its trade forum to become the largest in the world,” Arroyo said while opening the meeting, held under heavy security days after three deadly explosions in the southern Philippines.

The leaders want to establish the free trade zone by 2015, five years earlier than previously proposed.

The six richer nations — such as wealthy Singapore and oil-rich Brunei — will start the integration process in 2010, with the others following by 2015.

ABC Australia | Jan 13, 2007
 

Communist dictatorships, feudal over-lords and military juntas join hands to create the third leg in the Trilateral Commission’s Global Union.

The 10 leaders, whose members range from an absolute monarchy and military juntas to parliamentary democracies and one-party communist states, have failed to agree on the inclusion of a human rights mechanism within the charter’s blueprint.

South-East Asian countries have laid the foundation for an economic and political bloc and signed a convention on counter-terrorism.

The Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN) has sped up its goal for a free trade zone by five years to 2015 at an annual summit in the central Philippines.

Anxious to compete against the growing financial might of China and India, ASEAN has also agreed to transform itself into a rules-based organisation with teeth.

It would be more akin to the European Union, with faster decision-making processes, particularly for economic decisions.

The charter would include systems to monitor and enforce agreements, and panels that could issue binding decisions in disputes.

The most ground-breaking proposal gives ASEAN, whose combined population of 558 million is greater than the European Union, the power to suspend, or in extreme cases, expel members for serious breaches of the charter.

That could possibly put Burma’s membership in jeopardy if the junta continues to put up roadblocks to democracy.

But the 10 leaders, whose members range from an absolute monarchy and military juntas to parliamentary democracies and one-party communist states, have failed to agree on the inclusion of a human rights mechanism within the charter’s blueprint.

They have also failed to find common ground on Burma’s woeful human rights record.