Indonesia to host forum on E Timor

JAKARTA: Indonesia plans to host a ministerial forum to discuss the future entry of East Timor into the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean), a senior government official said on Tuesday.

Jose Antonio Morato Tavares, director general for Asean cooperation at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, told reporters Asean senior officials have received the results of feasibility studies in political, economic and sociocultural aspects of East Timor’s entry into Asean from three independent teams assigned for the work.

The feasibility studies will be considered by the officials to make recommendations for ministers on whether East Timor is ready to become the grouping’s 11th member, he said.

According to Mr Tavares, the ministerial forum, which will discuss the results of the feasibility studies and recommendations from the senior officials, will be held in the next few months.

Asked about the time frame of East Timor’s entry, the senior diplomat said, “We actually want to create a timeline for East Timor’s membership, but there are several Asean countries that have expressed disagreement”, without naming the countries.

East Timor applied for membership in 2011 during Indonesia’s chairmanship. Indonesia’s then foreign minister, Marty Natalegawa, said at that time that geographically, East Timor belongs to Southeast Asia and there are only two options for the group: to invite or to ignore the tiny country.

Some Asean members, however, have been cool to the idea, with Singapore in particular voicing concern over the country’s lack of human resources to cope with Asean’s large number of meetings and economic gap with other members that may put a burden on the group.

A senior Asean diplomat said the lack of human resources has indeed been the main obstacle hampering East Timor’s entry into Asean.

“They want to be an Asean member, but they are not serious. They only have one or two persons dealing with Asean matters. Furthermore, when the independent teams visited East Timor [for the feasibility studies], it was difficult to meet the officials there,” the diplomat said.