Posted on: Wednesday, August 7, 2002

EDITORIAL
Powell's Asia swing: hopeful, fearful notes

Secretary of State Colin Powell's swing through South and Southeast Asia has produced a slew of positive short-term effects while underscoring a host of serious long-term problems.

Powell's trip is important if only because it keeps this vital region from being pushed from Washington's radar screen by obsession with Iraq and the Middle East.

Powell displeased, justifiably, his hosts in both New Delhi and Islamabad, demanding that the Indians allow truly free and fair elections in Kashmir next month, and that Pakistan do its utmost to keep Muslim separatists from disrupting them.

The hosts took umbrage, maintaining the fiction that they're already doing these things.

In introducing expectations that may be unrealistic, Powell risks a new round of nuclear saber-rattling if those hopes are dashed. He is right that Kashmir is the key to rapprochement between the two countries, but it is also the tinderbox

In Brunei, Powell and his counterparts from the ASEAN countries signed an anti-terrorism accord that was perhaps the principle reason for Powell's trip.

Washington is correct to be concerned about the vulnerability of the region to terrorist groups, but the greatest care must be taken in keeping some regional leaders from using the document as justification for deeper repression.

This is so, for instance, in Indonesia, where security concerns are almost as serious as its military's repressive propensities. Congress was right to suspend U.S.-Indonesian military-to-military relations in light of the mayhem that was allowed in East Timor. Yet the military seems incapable of keeping order in places beset by sectarian violence.

It's thus a very ticklish problem as Washington moves to restore military aid and relations with Jakarta.

Powell's 15-minute chat with North Korea's foreign minister was one of several hopeful signs since a recent naval battle set back hopes for warming peninsular relations. There have been numerous periods of such overtures from Pyongyang over the years, however, with little to show for them.

This occurs against a backdrop of what may be an approaching train wreck related to the building of two light-water nuclear power plants in North Korea by South Korea and Japan. If Pyongyang refuses to allow international inspection of its existing reactors, it won't receive the equipment needed to complete the new plants.

If this power plant agreement, which has kept North Korea from building nuclear weapons since 1994, collapses in recriminations, Pyongyang seems likely to resume its weapons program and to resume its place as a major threat to world peace.