Asian-African summit opens in Indonesia
Regional, Politics, 4/23/2005

The summit of Asian and African leaders, which will adopt a strategic partnership declaration that will be aimed at strengthening cooperation among countries of the two continents, began in Jakarta on Friday.

Moroccan Prime Minister Driss Jettou is leading a delegation to the two-day meet, which marks the Golden Jubilee of the 1955 Asian-African Conference in Bandung.

Host Indonesia called for the building of a strategic partnership across the Indian Ocean based on the principles laid down at the historic Bandung meet, which gave birth to the Non-Aligned Movement.

The Jakarta summit, intended to bring Asia and Africa towards a better future based on their collective self-reliance and to ensure an enabling international environment for the benefit of peoples of the two continents, has brought together over 100 Asian and African countries with 42 being represented by heads of state or government.

The conference themed 'Reinvigorating the Bandung Spirit: Working towards a New Asian-African Strategic Partnership' will trade ideas and initiatives to address myriad problems facing two-thirds of the world's population living in the two continents, ranging from poverty to poor medical care.

Inaugurating the summit, Indonesian President Susilo Bambang Yudhoyono noted: "The sad fact of history is that while the Bandung spirit lived on after 1955, the Asia-Africa process stumbled.

Asserting that the case for Asia-Africa solidarity was even more compelling today than it was 50 years ago, the Indonesia leader underlined the need for strategic partnership between the nations of the two continents.

"Across the Atlantic ocean there is the formal alliance between Europe and North America. Across the Pacific Ocean there is the formal linkage between Asia and the Americas through APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation) and ASEAN (Association of South East Asian Nations) regional forums.

"But across the Indian Ocean none exists between Asia and Africa despite the success story of the first Asia Africa summit in 1955."

He said the real challenge today before Asia and Africa was not about developing the power to confront, but the power to connect.

"Let us build a strategic partnership that will bind our two continents in a vibrant pragmatic and forward looking way. It should cover three areas - political solidarity, economic cooperation and socio-cultural relations," he said.

"The operation of the strategic partnership should be based on and guided by a wide-range of agreed principles that the nations of Asia and Africa believe in. Foremost of these principles are the Dasa Sila (ten principles) of Bandung laid down in 1955."

If the Bandung spirit is adapted in our hearts and we make the partnership work, 'the story of Asia-Africa in the 21st century can be very different from its 20th century past', he told the opening session.

The summit will adopt the New Asian-African Strategic Partnership declaration, a broad visionary document outlining a programme for closer cooperation in political, economic and social and cultural relations.

Meanwhile, UN secretary general Kofi Annan pressed on with proposals for United Nations reform and calling for new commitments across a broad range of development challenges, deploring that every day, people were dying from poverty, hunger and disease, "but we aren't seeing enough action to meet key commitments to boost resources for development - even though we have in place an agreed development framework." At the same time, just as the human rights, peacekeeping and peace-building machinery of the UN faced "major strains," the global community had lost sight of vitally important issues, such as when to use force and who should authorize it.

He emphasized that a functioning, effective UN was important for everyone - but perhaps it was most important for the developing world, whose countries suffered most from violations of their social, cultural, economic and political rights. And while the UN's contribution to human rights remained important, it had become "uneven, and is often politicized and does not focus on all human rights in all countries," he added.

"I think the time has come for a major overhaul of institutions," Annan said, stressing that more voices needed to be heard - and listened to - to ensure the UN reflected 2005, not 1945. Along with this, all States should realize that modern challenges, from poverty to terrorism, were interconnected.

Saying that his reform proposals set out a "development-heavy agenda," he stressed the importance for concrete commitments to meet the target for official development assistance (ODA) amounting to 0.7 percent of gross national income by 2015. He had also called for renewed negotiations on duty-free and quota-free market access for all exports from developed countries, as well as a "big boost" in resources to fight against HIV/AIDS, an issue of deep importance for Africa and Asia as well as the world.

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