Rudd's Asian Union idea draws flak

Jun 5, 2008, 1:45 GMT

Sydney - Prime Minister Kevin Rudd's proposal for Australia to take a lead in fashioning an Asian version of the European Union was labeled 'presumptuous' Thursday.

Rudd, just seven months into his first term as prime minister and the least experienced of the region's leaders, flagged his ambition to recruit India to join a new Asia-Pacific grouping that would also include the United States, Japan, China, India and Indonesia.

'I believe it's time that we started to think about where we want to be with our regional architecture in 2020,' Rudd said. 'We believe that we need to anticipate the historic changes in our region and seek to shape them, rather than simply reacting to them.'

The Mandarin-speaking former diplomat appointed close friend and former ambassador to Indonesia Richard Woolcott as the marketing manager for the Asian Union campaign.

The brief given to Woolcott, 80, was to 'encourage the development of a genuine and comprehensive sense of community whose habitual operating principle is cooperation.'

Opposition Liberal Party foreign affairs spokesman Andrew Robb said it was 'presumptuous' of Rudd to lecture the region on the need for unity and to offer himself as the helmsman of an Asian counterpart to the European Union.

'His first job is not to be making pronouncements about grand architecture for the region, telling China, Indonesia and Japan and India how they will be organized as a region by Australia in the next 20 years,' Robb told national broadcaster ABC. 'Once he has demonstrated a capacity to build and maintain and grow strong bilateral relationships with all these countries, repair the damage he has already done with some of these countries, then we can ... maybe influence the broader architecture that shapes the region.'

Rudd leaves on Sunday for a fence-mending four-day visit to Japan, which was deeply hurt by his decision to leave Tokyo off the itinerary for a 17-day world tour following his election in November.

It will be the longest visit to Japan by any Australian leader - mirroring the four days he spent in China in April - and will be the first of two visits to Japan in four weeks.

Woolcott was Prime Minister Bob Hawke's right-hand-man when Australia put together the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum in 1989. APEC, which has 21 members and meets in a member country once a year, includes all the region's big powers except India.

Rudd's Asian Union initiative includes India, a country Rudd has yet to visit as prime minister and which has expressed concern that he is too close to China and dismissive of India's potential.

Woolcott said it was appropriate for Australia to cast itself as an architect of the region's security framework because it was not a major power.

'This fits neatly into the concept of greater middle-power diplomacy,' Woolcott told The Australian newspaper. 'If the US or China or Japan or some other big power were to suggest it, other nations might be apprehensive and back away. It's better for a middle power like Australia to take the initiative.'