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Zopfan

About 3 pages (751 words)

Zopfan

ZOPFAN, the Zone of Peace, Freedom, and Neutrality, originated in a 1970 proposal by Malaysia for neutralizing Southeast Asia. The idea for such a zone has been attributed to Tunku Abdul Rahman Putra al-Haj (1903–1990), who was then a parliamentary backbencher (rank-and-file member of parliament) but later became the deputy prime minister of Malaysia. Calling for a neutrality system, the proposal had two levels of implementation. The first level specified that Southeast Asian nation-states adopt and practice nonaggression principles based on mutual respect for sovereignty and territorial integrity, as well as finding different ways and means to ensure peace and security among themselves. For the second level of implementation, the major superpowers at the time, the United States, China, and the Soviet Union, were singled out as prospective guarantors for ensuring that the Southeast Asian region would not become an arena for conflict among these major countries. Furthermore, the superpowers were also called on to implement supervisory means to ensure the neutrality of Southeast Asia. The declaration emphasized regional cooperation in economic, social, and cultural matters, as well as support for strengthening the economic and social stability of the region to ensure peaceful and progressive national development.

The Malaysian government drove the process of gaining support for ZOPFAN by first broaching the proposal at the Non-Aligned Summit in Lusaka in September 1970. In 1971, the proposal was again raised at the Commonwealth Conference held in Singapore. The Zone of Peace, Freedom, and Neutrality Declaration, Malaysia, was signed by the foreign ministers of Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, and Singapore, and by the special envoy of the National Executive Council of Thailand on 27 November 1971.

The proposal and subsequent declaration by the foreign ministers, however, received only limited support from the superpowers as well as from Malaysia's fellow member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN, which in 1976 included Singapore, the Philippines, Indonesia, and Thailand, in addition to Malaysia; Brunei became part of ASEAN in 1984). Nevertheless, Malaysian officials pushed for two accords when the ASEAN member states met in Bali in 1976. These were the Declaration of ASEAN Concord and the Treaty of Amity and Cooperation signed at Bali. The two documents fell short of neutralizing the ASEAN states and the region as a whole.

Yet the second document, the Treaty of Amity and Cooperation, which is open to accession by other Southeast Asian states, was couched along lines that had been the basis of the proposal or plan for peace first mooted by Tunku Abdul Rahman Putra al-Haj. In the Treaty of Amity and Cooperation, the signatory countries agreed to be guided by the following principles in Article 2 of the treaty: mutual respect for the independence, sovereignty, equality, territorial integrity, and national identity of all nations; the right of every state to exist free of external interference, subversion, or coercion; noninterference in one another's internal affairs; settlement of differences or disputes by peaceful means; renunciation of the threat or use of force; effective cooperation among themselves.

In Chapter 4 of the Treaty of Amity and Concord, there is provision for peaceful settlement of conflict through a high council of ministerial-level representatives, which would include the parties to a dispute. The treaty has been considered a significant inter-governmental effort at initiating and achieving a Southeast Asian pact on security cooperation.

ZOPFAN has not progressed very much beyond the conceptual beginnings and terms set down during the Bali meeting in 1976. ZOPFAN remains an intra-ASEAN policy, but over the years, the principles of the proposal and the subsequent Treaty of Amity and Concord have been contravened by non-ASEAN states.

In the 1990s, there has been a call for the revival and review of ZOPFAN. Such a review, according to some analysts, should recognize that while regional cooperation on security must be promoted, the emphasis on national sovereignty severely limits the realization of ZOPFAN, which needs states to submit to a supranational authority. Furthermore, the concept of ZOPFAN seems increasingly irrelevant in the post–Cold War era. ZOPFAN is extremely limited in the contribution it can make toward the shaping or formulation of security arrangements and other such forms of regional cooperation among the member states of ASEAN.