US Assistant Secretary of State begins Asia visit
Updated
One of Washington's most senior officials has begun his visit to South East Asia, cementing the Obama administration's renewed focus on the region. US Assistant Secretary of State for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, Kurt Campbell will visit Singapore, Malaysia, Laos, Indonesia, Thailand and Japan in his ten day trip. Secretary Campbell will also deliver an address at Chulalongkorn University in Bangkok, as well as talks with ASEAN representatives in Jakarta, where President Obama is heading later this month.
Presenter: Sen Lam
Speakers: Raymond Burghardt, former US Ambassador to Vietnam, Director of the East West Centre in Hawaii
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LAM: As you say President Obama is due in Indonesia later this month. But what kinds of partnerships might Washington hope to build within ASEAN do you think?
BURGHARDT: ASEAN is already very important to the United States. It's often not remembered that we have more than three times as much American investment in Southeast Asia as we do in China for example, ten times more than we do in India. If you count oil and gas investment in Southeast Asia it's probably six times what we have in China. ASEAN as a whole is our fourth biggest trade partner. So we have a lot going on there already and then there is a lot of interest among the Southeast Asian countries and there has been for a long time, in the US playing a role as a balancing role in the region. President Obama heard explicitly about that during his November trip to Asia from President Triet of Vietnam and from Prime Minister Lee of Singapore. So there are strategic goals, there's a trade agenda, there are a lot of good reasons for Kurt to be making this trip.
LAM: Well ASEAN last year of course formalised a charter of human rights. Do you think Kurt Campbell and indeed Washington might try to encourage greater adherence to the charter amongst member nations?
BURGHARDT: That would certainly be one of the items on the agenda, certainly in some countries more than in others yes.
LAM: Well before he left Washington Kurt Campbell of course addressed Congress. He spoke about the visit to Laos, about cleaning up millions of leftover American bombs in the country. Now this is 40 years after the Vietnam War. Is the US making up for lost time, has successive US administrations been neglecting Laos?
BURGHARDT: Well Laos has actually been quite content to be rather isolated for most of the last 40 years. Laos has not been sort of pounding on the door of the rest of the world, certainly not on the American door, so I'm not sure I would put it that way. We've actually maintained diplomatic relations with Laos after the Vietnam War while breaking them with a new government in Vietnam and of course the new government in Cambodia. So actually in a sense there's been more continuity in American relations with Laos than with any of the other Indo-China countries.
LAM: Well how do you account for these millions of leftover American mines then? Some people might find that scandalous?
BURGHARDT: Well cleaning up mines is a huge job. One of the things that was interesting in Vietnam was that you got lots of American private groups, such as veterans' groups and others very actively involved in cleaning up the mines very early on, even before we normalised relations. And that then led to a huge, rather large US government program also working on it. In the case of Laos things move slowly in Laos. Yes, we probably could have started working on that earlier, but again the pace of the Laos government in terms of engagement on these issues is also at a rather slow pace.
