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Peaceful solutions to conflict important for ASEAN’s progress

01 November 2011 19:18 (UTC +04:00)

Baku-APA. Peaceful solutions are key point for ASEAN’s ambition towards progress and prosperity, an official told Xinhua in an exclusive interview here on Tuesday, APA reports.

Indonesian Permanent Representative for ASEAN Ngurah Swajaya said that ASEAN tries to avoid negative implication of any conflict in a pro-active way by developing cooperation and implementing agreed principles and norms.

"The principles and norms are those that were agreed in cooperation within ASEAN and between ASEAN and its dialog partners, including China, Japan and others," said Swajaya.

He took an example of border conflict between Thailand and Cambodia that should be resolved in agreed ASEAN cooperation framework.

"All problems should be settled peacefully through negotiations to make sure that heating situation could be contained before erupting to become an open conflict," said Swajaya.

Swajaya said that ASEAN has taken steps to avoid escalation of conflicts, such as holding meetings among ASEAN foreign ministers.

"In the meetings, they agreed on a mechanism in supervising cease-fire so that it could be maintained and both parties going back to negotiation table through consultation processes for a peaceful solution," he said.

He added that steps taken by ASEAN have been recognized by international organization such as the United Nations Security Council and the International Court.

"When Cambodia brought the issue to the United Nations Security Council and the International Court, the two world organizations referred back to ASEAN. They said that the issue should be settled within ASEAN," he said.

It means, he said, that they acknowledge the effectiveness of ASEAN’s role in addressing problems between its member states.

It also means that what ASEAN has done is right, he added.

Touching on South China Sea issue, Swajaya said that ASEAN and China have reached an agreement through dialogs and making activities of confidence building and practical ones. "The activities support ASEAN and China to sit together to build up confidence in order to facilitate dispute settlement," he said.

The impact of such conflicts would be very significantly negative for ASEAN, he said.