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PHUKET, Thailand : The signing by the United States this week of a friendship pact with Southeast Asia sends a strong signal of its desire to deepen ties and counter China's increasing influence, observers said.
US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton will sign the Treaty of Amity and Cooperation (TAC) on Wednesday in the Thai resort of Phuket during a meeting with her counterparts from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).
Washington has been reluctant to sign the non-aggression pact for years, fearing it would leave little room for it to exert its influence on political and security issues in the region of nearly 600 million people.
But a resurgent China signed the treaty in 2003 to broaden its influence, and amid lingering suspicions that the US refusal showed the region was beneath its diplomatic radar, Washington has finally relented.
"Apparently the US has decided that the benefits of signing outweigh the costs," former ASEAN secretary general Rodolfo Severino told AFP.
The signing comes on the eve of the annual ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), Asia's foremost gathering on security issues involving countries such as China, Japan, Russia, the United States and the European Union.
Southeast Asian ministers in a joint statement on Monday "welcomed the impending accession by the United States" to the treaty "as a strong signal of its commitment to peace and security in the region."
The comment reflected satisfaction after years of questions about US intentions in Southeast Asia and a perception that Washington had its mind on other regions.
The treaty, first established in 1976, commits signatories to three basic principles: the peaceful settlement of disputes, non-recourse to the use of force and non-interference in domestic affairs.
"The implication of not signing is this: if you are a power involved in the region and you don't sign it, people might ask why doesn't the US sign?" said Severino, now head of the Singapore-based ASEAN Studies Centre.
"Does it mean that they (US) are not precluding the use of force in settling disputes, do they want to interfere in countries' internal affairs?"
Signing could also help extend US sway in an area where Asian giants China and India have been forging goodwill by joining a number of regional bodies, diplomats said.
China has emerged as a key player at meetings with ASEAN, which views it as a major trading partner and growing global power that should be kept firmly on side.
"Behind this (decision) was a concern that the US was losing ground to China," Bridget Welsh, an associate professor of political science at Singapore Management University, told AFP.
"In order for the US to stay in the game it was accepted that it needed to affirm the norms of ASEAN the organisation, thus the signing of (the treaty of amity)."
Diplomats said Washington could use the treaty as a vehicle for membership in the East Asia Summit, which groups ASEAN and its six trading partners Australia, China, India, Japan, New Zealand and South Korea.
Signing the treaty is a requirement for membership in the summit, which is widely seen as a precursor to a pan-Asian economic and strategic community.
"The East Asia Summit has the potential of emerging as a gargantuan trade and strategic bloc," a Southeast Asian diplomat told AFP on condition of anonymity.
"If the US is not on board, the United States will have little influence in such a bloc that includes China and India."
The United States still holds sway in the APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation) forum, a loose grouping of 21 economies stretching from Chile to China.
But APEC has remained unwieldy and risks losing its influence to emerging and more cohesive trade blocs, a second Asian diplomat noted.
- AFP/vm
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