JAKARTA - Southeast Asian leaders have failed to achieve a breakthrough Sunday at the border between Cambodia and the Thailand deadly skirmishes in the shade a regional summit in Jakarta expected to show progress towards economic integration.
Clashes autour to collapse Hindu temples in the disputed areas clearly illustrated the tensions between countries in the Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) which could derail plans to create a single economic community by 2015 and apparent inability of the block to deal with disagreements.
Indonesia, host of the Summit of the ASEAN XVIII, has been pressing for an agreement that would prevent the meeting being marked by the border dispute. But at the end of everything which has been obtained was an announcement to save face as the Ministers for Foreign Affairs, Thai and Cambodian remain an extra day in Jakarta for talks more.
"I come here is steps to create a war of words," Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen said at a press conference in which he announced the further round of talks. Both parties have spoken many times in recent weeks, but without finding a resolution to clashes which claimed 18 lives since April.
ASEAN, a collection of authoritarian States and nascent democracies, has a policy of non-interference in the internal affairs of the other and therefore struggled to resolve the border dispute which - although on the surface of the subject matter of the property of some ancient temples - is driven by domestic political dynamics in Thailand and Cambodia.
THAI ELECTIONS COMPLICATE DISPUTE
Thai Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva said Reuters on the sidelines of the Summit that he will go to the polls July 3. With the approach of the elections, the issue of the border is that it can try to unite behind him Thais. It has certainly not will seek to make concessions that would be him losing votes.
The Party considered to be the biggest rival of the Democrats of the Abhisit is could Thai, a vehicle even political exiles Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra former who has strong ties with Hun Sen and was briefly advise him official.
ABHISIT emphasized the fact that the Thailand wanted peace and that he was not seeking to score political points.
"The ultimate objective must be to establish a lasting peace, so that our people can live peacefully side by side along the Thai-Cambodian border," he said in a press conference.
But it raises the blame for the border tensions squarely on Cambodia, fuelling scepticism on the question of whether the extra day of talks Monday will achieve anything.
Other ASEAN countries were not satisfied with the tension.
"It is very important that we hold together", the Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono said the leaders of the region, at the Summit by adding the group is facing formidable challenges.
"They need to think how badly ill generated would hamper cooperation of ASEAN projects..." Disunited ASEAN is taken less seriously by investors, ", said the newspaper Straits Times Singapore controlled by the State in an editorial.
SECURITY CHALLENGES
Head of Singapore, Lee Hsien Loong did not attend the Summit, stay at home for the general elections that have easily seen the decision that people's Action Party returned to power as expected. But the Foreign Minister lost his seat in a vote of benchmark for reinforced by a young generation more skeptical opposition.
The rest, meeting of the leaders the region in a cavernous Conference Center with a finely carved wooden ceiling, have also struggled to engage the region 500 million people in a project for the construction of an economic community with the free movement of persons and goods by 2015.
"If the situation in Cambodia and the Thailand worse yet, then I fear, they might have to refer to the horizon 2020 or even put on hold," said Enrico Tanuwidjaja, analyst DMG OSK Group at Singapore.
In a place patrolled by hundreds of police and military personnel after concerns about the attacks of reprisals by the Islamists in Indonesia after the murder of Osama bin Laden, leaders discussed the challenges of food and energy supply security.
The group varies from oil and gas-rich Indonesia, Malaysia, Brunei, the Viet Nam and Malaysia and among the best in the world rice exporter Thailand, centre commercial port, Singapore, Philippines and Cambodia limited resource and impoverished Myanmar and Laos.
Fast-growing area became once more a magnet for new investors to the market and strives to develop its economy of 1.8 billion by the negotiation of bilateral trade with the European Union and the improvement of transport links with China's major trading partners.
Previous meetings have often been overshadowed by the controversy over the Member Myanmar. The country has asked the Presidency of ASEAN in 2014, an application which, if granted, would greatly complicate the links between the block and the United States and the European Union.
A release of the draft of the Summit, said the request had been agreed, but leaders backpedalled later. The final Declaration of the meeting said only that the request was being considered.
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