Statement of the President at the ASEAN-Japan Summit

(Kuala Lumpur Convention Center, Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, December 13, 2005)

The ASEAN-Japan partnership is the oldest among ASEAN’S relations with the Plus Three partners.

The ASEAN-Japan Plan of Action has gained momentum this year, especially political and security cooperation. Some ASEAN countries, including the Philippines, entered into a Regional Cooperation Agreement in Combating Piracy and Armed Robbery Against Ships in Asia with Japan.

More recently, our Ministers were informed of Japan’s plan to launch an ASEAN-Japan Counter-Terrorism Dialogue early next year. We find the Japanese initiatives timely and responsive.

We need a broad front of regional security involving counter-terrorism cooperation.

Maritime security is also imperative to stop piracy and armed robbery, as well as arms smuggling and human trafficking along the vulnerable sea lanes of the ASEAN-Japan region. Joint border patrols must be the norm across our common seas.

ASEAN and Japan have over six years of productive partnership under the SOME-METI energy cooperation framework. For example, METI has provided technical assistance for feasibility studies on oil stockpiling and is financially supporting the ASEAN Center for Energy (ACE) stock-taking exercise on bio-fuels. Nevertheless, there’s still much more that Japan can do for energy cooperation with ASEAN, such as:

1. Alternative energies and their commercialization. We urge Japan to start looking into the possibilities of tapping these energy sources from resources native to the East Asian region. Oil prices, for instance have now made it profitable to convert cane sugar to ethanol. ASEAN and Japan could invest collectively in ethanol plants in Southeast Asia’s sugar-producing regions.
2. Bio-fuels, where Japan is a technology leader. Another promising alternative energy source is diesel oil from coconuts, which both Indonesia and the Philippines plant in large quantities.
3. Sustainable energy development, a Japanese expertise. The Philippines and, I am sure, the other nations in our region have also begun to invest in wind farms and in rural solar-energy projects. But these experimental programs are constrained by our lack of capital.
4. Cooperative efforts to intensify oil-and-gas exploration in the China Sea claimed competitively by China and Japan and by Japan and South Korea, following the model of Vietnam, the Philippines and China’s cooperative seismic operations in areas of the South China Sea that we claim competitively
5. Best practices in efficient energy conservation, a Japanese expertise.
6. A regional stockpile for fuel. Japan has assisted the Philippines and Thailand in making feasibility studies on oil stockpiling. Thus, it can also provide support for assessing arrangements for a regional hub/exchange for ethanol fuel. Initially, the Philippines offers the use of the existing Subic Bay Terminal Freeport for its regional hub/exchange.

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