Fed: ASEAN talks show Aust can be close to US and Asia - Downer

AAP General News (Australia)
12-01-2004
Fed: ASEAN talks show Aust can be close to US and Asia - Downer

CANBERRA, Dec 1 AAP - Australia's success at the Association of South East Asian Nations
(ASEAN) talks showed it could be close to the United States as well as Asia, Foreign Minister
Alexander Downer said today.

Australia will begin talks with South East Asian nations on a free trade pact after
Prime Minister John Howard headed off a row over his refusal to sign up to a non-aggression
pact with the region.

Australia also looked set to be invited to the ASEAN summit in Kuala Lumpur next year
after Malaysia softened its often thorny relations with Canberra.

Mr Downer said the results of the ASEAN talks in the Loatian capital of Vientiane put
an end to arguments that Australia could not be a close ally of the US and Asia simultaneously.

"We haven't had to sacrifice our relationship with George Bush or with the American
administration in order to achieve that," he told reporters.

"We've been able to achieve both and I think we have demonstrated that point in spades
in the last 24 hours.

"Please from now onwards as a result of what has happened in Vientiane could Australian
debate move on from ... people believing that you can't have a close relationship with
the United States and sustain a close relationship with Asia.

"Surely that argument, along with many other arguments, has been buried in the last 24 hours."

Mr Downer said Singapore, South Korea, Japan, the Philippines and Thailand, as well
as Australia, had strong relationships with the US.

However unlike Australia, Japan and South Korea had agreed to sign ASEAN's non-aggression pact.

Mr Downer said it was not a priority of Australia's to sign a security pact with South East Asia.

He said Australia's security relationships with ASEAN countries were strong, with a
bilateral memoranda of understanding on counter terrorism already in place.

"We have put with ... in the last 48 hours all sorts of abuse here in Australia about
not signing the TAC, as it's called, the Treaty of Amity and Cooperation," Mr Downer said.

"We had yesterday the day of the historic summit in Vientiane we had the Australian
opposition moving a motion condemning the Australian government for its relations with
Asia.

"That will be a footnote in the history of these few days, that our main opposition
party thought that it could make political capital by making claims that Australia wasn't
properly engaging with Asia and yet look what Australia has achieved."

AAP bt/sb/lma/bwl

KEYWORD: ASEAN DOWNER

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