A DIPLOMATIC fudge will enable the EU and its Thai hosts at this weekend's Bangkok Asia Europe summit to finesse the thorny issue of human rights, it emerged in Brussels yesterday.
Pressed repeatedly at a pre-summit press briefing on whether he would be raising the issue at the summit, the Commission's President, Mr Jacques Santer, would only say that he intended to stress the positive side of the relationship the EU and Asia are hoping to forge. Time enough, when bridges are built, to debate their differences, he argued.
Mr Santer acknowledged that other European heads of government might well raise the controversial issues of Indonesia in East Timor and China's violations of human rights, but he implied that the final declaration was only likely to make general references to support for the UN and the Universal Declaration on Human Rights.
The Asia Europe Meeting (Asem) is being billed as a milestone in relationships between the EU and Asia, bringing together 15 European heads of government and the heads of seven ASEAN members (Indonesia Malaysia, Singapore, the Philippines, Thailand, Brunei, and Vietnam) with China, Japan and South Korea.
The meeting, an informal get to know you session, is the first of its kind between the two great regions and reflects concerns on both sides to put relationships on a new footing.
EU trade with the whole of Asia, at some £200 billion in 1994, is greater than Asia's £150 million trade with the US, and China has become the EU's fourth largest market. Japan is its second market while trade with South Korea and ASEAN has trebled in the last 10 years. Half the growth in global trade between now and 2000 will be in east and south east Asia.
The EU has bent over backwards to allay the concerns of the Asian countries that it intends to use the occasion of the informal talks that are predominantly trade focused to lecture them on their human rights record. The Commissioner responsible for relations with Asia, Mr Manuel Marin, warned yesterday of perceptions that had to be disabused of Europe as moralising former colonial powers.
Human rights activists reject claims that the concerns and their calls for minimum labour standards agreements in trade accords are merely a form of protectionism. Amnesty yesterday said that any dialogue not based on the recognition that human rights and economic development were indivisible would be "a hollow one".
"This is not the west telling Asia what to do," the group's statement said. "The demand for human rights comes from the people of Asia themselves. Governments should listen to what the people in the region are asking for."
Human rights will, however, be the ghost at the feast, whether acknowledged or not. There is little doubt that some of the Asian countries, although they do not say so publicly, see the very fact of the meeting as a way of drawing China into a web of multilateral relationships and commitments that may help to ease many regional tensions over issues like Taiwan.
Yesterday the Commission was putting its best foot forward. The Trade Commissioner, Sir Leon Brittan, talked of two specific objectives the possibility of significantly boosting Europe's investment in the region, and the building of an important alliance for the World Trade Organisation's first ministerial meeting in Singapore in December.
Despite east Asia's high rate of return, Commission figures show that EU countries shifted less than 1 per cent of their foreign investment to the region between 1982 and 1992. Europe's contribution to investment there was only 10 per cent of the foreign inward investment in that period.
Mr Santer expressed the hope that co-operation would also extend to two other broad areas, political dialogue and economic and social co-operation. Apart from European support for the efforts of ASEAN to promote inter regional dialogue, he said, he believed there could be common ground on such issues as reform of international institutions like the UN and non proliferation.
On Monday foreign ministers agreed to the EU's £4 million contribution to the KEDO project to replace North Korea's nuclear reactors.
EU development and co-operation commitments in the region run to some £320 million a year for the next five years, and the Commission hopes to use the funding to improve cultural, scientific and business exchanges as well as environmental and developmental projects.
. In Jakarta, the Indonesian Foreign Minister, Mr Ali Alatas, said he hoped issues such as UN reforms, the nuclear ban, and trade would dominate the summit, avoiding "irrelevant" subjects like child labour and East Timor. "The summit should not bring up controversial issues," he said.
