Australian PM Appoints Envoy To Push Asia Community Proposal
Wednesday June 4th, 2008 / 23h36
SYDNEY -(Dow Jones)- Australian Prime Minister Kevin Rudd has appointed a special envoy to discuss with countries in the Asia-Pacific region his proposal for an Asia-Pacific community. Dick Woolcott, a former high-level Australian diplomat, will visit capitals in the region over the next six months to discuss the idea, Rudd said in a speech late Wednesday. "Subject to that further dialogue, we would envisage the possibility of a further high-level conference of government and non-government representatives to advance this proposal," Rudd said. "I fully recognize that this will not be an easy process - just as the establishment of APEC was not easy 20 years ago," he said, referring to the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum. Rudd said the new regional institution should include the U.S., Japan, China, India, Indonesia and the other states of the region. It should "engage in the full spectrum of dialogue, cooperation and action on economic and political matters and future challenges related to security." "The purpose is to encourage the development of a genuine and comprehensive sense of community whose habitual operating principle is cooperation," he said. The Australian leader said the region needed to act now on this proposal in order not to succumb "to the perception that future conflict within our region may somehow be inevitable". Rudd said discussion on his proposal doesn't mean a scaling down of existing bodies, which include APEC and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, or ASEAN. An Asia-Pacific community wouldn't necessarily use the European Union as a model. "Our special challenge is that we face a region with greater diversity in political systems and economic structures, levels of development, religious beliefs, languages and cultures, than did our counterparts in Europe," Rudd said. -By Iain McDonald, Dow Jones Newswires; 61-2-8235-2953; iain.mcdonald@dowjones.com
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