ASEAN credibility on line as ministers pull out

ASEAN and national flags of the ten ASEAN members are erected outside a Hanoi hotel where the 34th meeting of its Foreign Ministers is taking place

HANOI, Vietnam -- A gathering of Southeast Asian foreign ministers aimed at rebuilding confidence and stability in the region has faltered before it begins.

Indonesia's foreign minister pulled out Sunday due to domestic turmoil.

It was the second blow to the week-long series of meetings due to kick off on Monday, after North Korea said last week its foreign minister would not attend, dashing hopes of a resumption of high-level talks with the United States and South Korea.

An Indonesian official in Hanoi told Reuters Foreign Minister Alwi Shihab cancelled his trip due to upheaval in Jakarta, where Indonesian President Abdurrahman Wahid faces imminent impeachment for alleged corruption and incompetence.

"With the current situation, he decided he should be with the president," the official said.

Credibility on the line

Ministers from the 10-nation Association of South East Asian Nations (ASEAN) are to hold two days of meetings followed by discussions with key regional players China, Japan and South Korea.

Ministers will then hold talks with partners in the 23-member ASEAN Regional Forum, Asia's key security grouping.

The main challenge for ministers will be recovering some credibility for ASEAN, which has been hobbled by disagreements and declining economic clout and increasingly overshadowed by its giant neighbour China.

This task will not be helped by events in Jakarta, where bomb blasts in churches on Sunday underlined the potential for chaos in ASEAN's largest and most volatile member that could destabilise the entire region.

Rich versus poor

Top of the formal ASEAN programme is a resolution pledging to narrow the gap between richer members and poor nations.

Communist Vietnam and Laos, Cambodia and military-ruled Myanmar fall into this category, but Indonesia's plight is still likely dominate closed sessions.

In a weekend editorial, Thailand's Bangkok Post daily said the title that host Vietnam had chosen for the meeting -- ASEAN: United, Stable, Integrated and Outward-Looking -- read like a checklist of everything the group was not.

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"The theme chosen for this year's meeting of foreign ministers could not be more appropriate as it draws attention to all the qualities missing in ASEAN," the paper said.

Thai Foreign Minister Surakiart Sathirathai insisted the group could prove that it could stand together and help poorer members.

"What we would like to achieve is to find a way that ASEAN can prove to the world that we are capable of further integrating in the economic field," he told reporters on arrival in Hanoi.

But even the richer nations face renewed economic malaise -- Singapore is in technical recession and most of the region is facing sharply slower growth.

Analysts question whether ASEAN is in any position to help poorer members catch up.

Surakiart said the ASEAN Regional Forum meeting would discuss "preventive diplomacy" to defuse regional conflicts.

U.S. Secretary of State Colin Powell, who arrives on Tuesday for his first trip to the country since he served in the Vietnam War, will be seeking to improve ties with China after a recent spy-plane row and to defuse a potential argument with Japan over incidents involving U.S. servicemen stationed there.

Reuters contributed to this report.