My question follows up on the question of intervention.  It seems to me that, in the end, the test of security cooperation is the ability to deal with the world’s problems and crises as they emerge.  How do we refine the tools that we have to deal with these various problems?

 

Obviously every problem is different, as Mr Goff eloquently showed.  It seems to me that some situations are going to require a security intervention that may be short of a military intervention.  On that front, how do we build the ability and policing in the availability of police resources, and how do we share that capability in the future?

Some situations are actually dangerous and may require combat.  How do we ensure that there is a holistic response?  How do we obtain a holistic response and how do we share the responsibilities for the tougher roles?  An example would be in Southern Afghanistan at the moment.

 

Are there some situations that are just too difficult?  How do we deal with the situations like Darfur where there seems no obvious end or objective for a military operation?  How do we get together to deal with very complex situations like that?

 

The Minister for Defence for Singapore finished off on a very fine statement saying that regional security needs to be a cooperative activity.  Similarly, Dr Jung also quoted Kofi Annan and said the same.

 

As of today, the air routes and the borders are being fortified progressively.  The source of human trouble – whether it is terrorism, drugs, human trafficking – is from sea routes.  Therefore, we need to have an information-sharing system as far as sea lanes are concerned. 

 

This information-sharing system is different to intelligence-sharing which has other connotations.  Basically it would mean a better awareness of the maritime domain around the particular country.  Singapore had mooted the idea of RECAAP, which I think is a very good idea where we map all the shipping worldwide.  IMO is doing this with AIS and the LRIT which would come later. 

 

Countries need to get together so that the shipping, across the sea lanes of communication, is tracked and information is shared between various countries.  If we get the information‑sharing, whether it is the Malacca Strait or the shipping heading towards Sri Lanka, by process of elimination, many security measures can be put into place.

 

The second aspect is particularly related to the Malacca Strait.  Surveillance of the Malacca Strait is a daunting task, particularly with the type of traffic that goes through there.  The littoral states have taken on the responsibility.  In the previous plenary, the Minister for Defence for Indonesia had pointed out that all this would take time.  It would be prudent to consider if the funnel states could help in surveillance support, without impinging on the sovereign status of the littoral states.

 

This is directed primarily to Minister Teo.  Last year at this forum there was a lot of very positive discussion about the first ASEAN Defence Ministers’ meeting.  You mentioned in your remarks about it being a major step forward in defence cooperation.  But I wonder if you could provide us with some more specifics about its current status, and particularly about where you think it is or should be going?  And perhaps talk about the practical limits that still exist that inhibit closer defence cooperation within ASEAN?

 

Thank you.  I would be really interested in the comments of the ministers on whether we have really got the toolkits right for dealing with the challenges we now face, which you all referred to in one way or another.  When we consider the shape of the security challenges, the primary security challenges we are currently facing and prospectively facing in this part of the world in particular, many of them clearly relate more to problems within states rather than between states and some of the tools that we have traditionally had in our alliance frameworks and even in our national security systems are really not necessarily optimal in their primary modes for these circumstances. 

 

There may clearly be a need for the military to be able to conduct fire fights – maybe even fight and win battles.  But the military on their own are rarely going to win wars or the conflicts or bring a satisfactory resolution to these situations.  What is clearly required is a much broader range of assets to be brought into play: police, education, finance, health, all sorts of things.  That brings me to the key question I guess.  The toolkits we are applying – are they too stove‑piped?  Do we not need much more organisational fusing between these various national instruments that we can apply, and perhaps international instruments? 

 

How much true joint training do we do, pulling together these broader national and international elements to make them work effectively in these challenging environments?  How much exercising are we doing with all of these elements together?  I know there has been some progress in some aspects, but it seems to me there may be scope for a lot more effective and efficient way of applying our resources in some of these really difficult environments into the future. 

 

I have a question for each of the three ministers.  To Minister Teo, my question is do you have a roadmap to help us evolve the ASEAN Regional Forum from stage one confidence building, through stage two preventative diplomacy and finally to conflict resolution?  My question to Minister Goff, I want to tell Phil Goff that I greatly admire the positive and constructive role that New Zealand plays in the region and the world.  Can you share with us what lessons you have learned from the relative success of your intervention in Bougainville and the setbacks that you have seen in both the Solomon Islands and Timor-Leste?  And to Minister Jung, my question is Europe occupies a seat in the ASEAN Regional Forum.  Europe has also indicated its intention to exceed to the Treaty of Amity and Cooperation.  We welcome all these good intentions.  My question to you is, in what specific and concrete way can Europe make a contribution to security cooperation in the Asia Pacific?

 

I have two questions.  One to Minister Hean and the next to Minister Jung.  The first one to Minister Hean – in the course of your address, you flagged the various security alliances forums that exist in Asia, some of them overlapping and some of them niche.  However, there is a view that the Cold War never really ended, it just acquired a different form and a dimension.  If that view is correct – which it is to a certain extent – then how do you see the impact of that on the evolution of regional security architecture in Asia, considering that the established powers and the rising powers have their own worldview and their own interests? 

 

Do you think that these contradictions can really be surmounted in the foreseeable future, and we can actually work something out on the basis of shared concerns.  That is my question to you.  To Minister Jung, I heard your remarks on Afghanistan, with a lot of interest.  I was quite intrigued.  If things are really working for NATO in Afghanistan, why is the Taliban coming back in such a big way?  That is my short question.  Thank you.

 

I wanted to follow up on two rather striking remarks made by Minister Jung.  I think many of us were very interested and very gratified to hear the expression from the German defence minister that it is now necessary to counter the threats at their origins, a comment that is backed up and made credible by the list of operations that you then read out – more particularly, the recent sea security operations in Lebanon.  Against that background and recognising the change that this represents in Germany.  It is welcomed, I think, by and large, internationally.  I wanted to give you the opportunity to respond to Secretary Gates’ remarks yesterday about national caveats.  This has been a subject of some discussion within NATO and within Germany as well.  He cited El Salvador as an example of the kind of operations and attitudes really. 

 

In Afghanistan, the most helpful and left‑unnamed countries that might be hindered by national caveats – I think Germany is one that has been mentioned frequently – I just wanted to see if you wanted to give us your point of view on that.  Particularly since some of your own countrymen have expressed to me concerns that the national caveats that Germany has imposed in Afghanistan will lead to a self-fulfilling prophecy.  Because your soldiers are doing so little in relative military terms, the question will arise for Germans, ‘Why are we there at all?’  Then I wondered if I could follow up as well on your striking remark about migration pandemics as a national security threat.  I wonder if there is much discussion within NATO about how to deal with migration pandemics, the national security aspects of emigration?  Could you develop that a little more in terms of how military forces might be involved?

 

My question is inspired largely by Minister Goff’s discussion of the consequences and reactions to state failure.  There is research that indicates that even though it may not seem this way, violent conflict including internal conflict is actually on a downward decreasing trend over the last decades.  On Friday night, in his list of three major challenges to Asian stability, the Singapore prime minister notably included climate change as one of the great challenges.  The question this raises, it seems to me, is that if the actual caring capacity of the planet suddenly comes under great stress, what would be the implications for dealing with issues of state failure?  Could this favourable trend be reversed, and would our capacity for stabilisation and state building be even remotely adequate?

 

Thank you, Doctor Jung, the German Defence Minister, for sharing your views on NATO.  I think NATO is going to offer an invitation to Central Asia and also Eastern Asian countries in the form of a global partnership.  I think in this endeavour, you will face strong opposition by Russia and China, when you cross over the traditional dividing line between Asia and Europe.  How are you going to persuade Russia and China in this endeavour? 

 

My second question goes to Minister Teo.  Thank you for your very eloquent and articulate speech.  Given that the ministers talked about the changing nature of security – comprehensive security, networked security, collective security and collective responsibility, I think the traditional dividing line between military security and foreign policy in address the comprehensive needs of security is changing.  In expanding the Shangri-La dialogue to 2011, do you have any need to include foreign ministers in this Shangri-La dialogue?

 

My question is directed to Minister Goff.  I thank you very much for your excellent presentation about New Zealand’s experiences with peacekeeping and security missions.  Having listened to your presentation, I felt it was about time to take up peacekeeping and security missions as a focus of security cooperation in East Asia and the Asia Pacific region.  Also, it is good to hear that you are working on ARF peacekeepers expert meetings. 

My question is, what do you think is the appropriate next step for security cooperation, focusing on peacekeeping and security missions?  Do you think that it is the creation of a joint training operation or grading our toolkits?  Then do you consider that the ASEAN Regional Forum is going to be an appropriate mechanism to do that?  In that respect, Minister Teo, do you have any thoughts about the appropriate framework to deal with taking up peacekeeping operations as an example of security cooperation in this region?

 

My question is for Minister Teo.  Thank you very much for a very comprehensive and well thought out presentation.  I thought it was very interesting that you presented the guiding principles for evolution of the regional security framework.  I thought the three principles were a very well thought out set of ideas.  I would like you to move one more step forward and share your views.  My question is, do you see any need for new multilateral security architecture in addition to the existing ones?  In other ones, do you see any security challenges or needs that are not properly addressed by existing frameworks?  Thank you very much.

 

My question is directed at the German defence minister.  The prime minister of Singapore, in his impressive speech, mentioned that Japan still has unfinished business with the past.  Although Japan thinks that it has apologised many times, it needs to be told if that is indeed the clear perception of Asia still today in a constructive and frank manner, as the Singaporean prime minister did.  I must quickly hasten to add that Mr Abe, despite his label as a hulk, is quickly changing the whole approach towards the issue of history.  I can personally vouch for that.  Not because of convenience sake, but because his responsibility and youthful sense of justice are the main reason for that change. 

 

He has a tall order to make Japan able to do the same task as Germany is doing, for instance, in Afghanistan, i.e. not just humanitarian assistance, but providing security to that country.  Mr Abe has a difficult task of convincing the pacifist domestic sentiment.  At the same time, not to arouse a sense of caution and criticism from our neighbouring countries, my question to you, Minister Jung, is please share your experience with us of how you have been able to overcome your domestic sensitivity and of course, Japan has no NATO as a framework.  How far are you willing to go under your own constitutional restraint? 

 

That is an extraordinary list of questions to answer.  I will take the panellists in reverse order.  Minister Jung first, then Minister Goff, then Minister Teo to conclude.  I do not think they will be able to answer all of your questions, so my advice to them is leave out all the easy questions and just answer the hard ones. 

 

Thank you, I will try my very best, though of course sometimes you need more time to address those questions.  First of all, on the development in Afghanistan, let me underscore that I am of the opinion that the development is positive, and more positive than I read in the newspapers. The truth is that in Afghanistan, we have no Taliban regime any more.  We have a constitution, an elected parliament who are 25% women, and a structure.  We had 1 million children in school when we started, and no girls.  Now we have 6 million children in schools, including girls.  We have developed basic medical care for 80% of people so I think we have reasons to talk about positive developments in Afghanistan.  

 

I am convinced that the expansion of ISAF into the east had started already in October last year.  The overall strategy that has been successfully implemented in the north of Afghanistan has now to be expanded to overall Afghanistan.  The comprehensive approach has gone on since 21 March.  We did not have a spring offensive from the Taliban and they were not able to destroy the dam.  We have created security and reconstruction in a ring-like operation from Kandahar, Kabul, Mazar‑i‑Sharif, so we have a joint operation with 20,000 people involved.  It is a very positive effort.  Of course, I have seen that since last year there has been a considerable increase in suicide bombings.  We learned that lesson the hard way in Kunduz recently.  It would be completely wrong to say that the operation should be stopped.  I am deeply convinced that if we continue along this route and win the trust of the people, we will be successful.  Let me come back to the remarks concerning the caveats.  In Riga, different red and green files were handed out.  Green meant no caveats and red meant there were national caveats. 

 

Germany received a green file.  We have agreed on a burden sharing.  We have the third-largest contingent with 3,000 troops in the north.  We are in Kabul and we have taken on board the commitment that if friends in other regions are in an emergency, we help them.  We provide logistical support in the south.  This is why we have signal soldiers in the south and SYOPS teams in the south – to provide support.  Now we have our Tornado aircraft there to close the intelligence gap for the whole of Afghanistan.  The commander of ISAF is more than satisfied in view of those results.  I would ask you to present the situation properly. 

 

On the question of Darfur, I think that jointly we should work towards a success of this hybrid mission of the United Nations to implement this.  In concrete terms, we now have the AMIS (African Union Mission in Sudan) operation in Darfur.  There, we provide logistic support and we have 200 soldiers there under the umbrella of our mandate.  We also need an overall mission with about 20,000 soldiers, but this mission should still have an African face so to speak.  The Sudanese government has to make a move.  I am grateful if there is support and the Sudanese government could make a move so we have a peaceful and stable development in this area in Darfur.  This can be brought about by the United Nations.

 

Let me come back to reconstruction.  I would reiterate that these measures have to be concentrated so they become more effective.  We have to make them more effective in Afghanistan also.  If possible, we need one responsible partner in the civil area who does the coordination and collections experience from other operations – in the Balkans, for example.  In Kosovo, we have the civil reconstruction structures up until police and state structures, planned now by the European Union and it has all been implemented. 

 

The third point is on migration flows.  Let me just point out, in this context, that we have learned our lessons painfully in context with the former Yugoslavia.  There were 400,000 civil war refugees in Germany.  Put that in context with Africa and stabilisation measures in the Congo done by the European Union.  Of course we have an interest in a more stable development in Africa, because I do see those refugee boats landing on the shores of Spain almost every day.  It has something to do with migration flows and for that reason, I think this is a point that should also be addressed in this context. 

 

The last point is NATO partnerships.  We have clearly decided to have an open door policy, with a view to Asia.  There, we talk in the NATO-Russia Council and we have an anniversary in terms of Russia.  I was recently in China and I discussed these questions.  With this, we are reaching a development where we can achieve cooperation and do things jointly and make further developments. 

 

In summary, I think our overall responsibility – be it within NATO, in Europe or with a few to the Asian states, I think through the international threats, we have a joint responsibility.  We have to work closer together in order to make this close cooperation for security and stability more effective in the interests of our states and in the interests of peaceful development in the world. 

 

I will try to bundle together my answers to the questions about the effectiveness of the intervention force.  I will then come back to the question about the environmental impact.  Obviously I have covered some of the answers in terms of what, from our experience, makes a successful intervention.  It needs to have a holistic, balanced approach that is inclusive of partnership with the local government and recognises the importance of regional participation and international mandate.  I want to raise another couple of things in answer to those questions.

 

Firstly, every case is different.  Do not believe that one size fits all.  In some cases, as I mentioned, we could send in a group of people who are unarmed.  That in itself was confidence-building.  Nobody would suggest, for example, that you would do that in Afghanistan.  You need to tailor your tool kit to fit the particular circumstances.  One thing I could add is the importance of working with civil society, because you cannot always – even with a properly conducted democratic election – be absolutely confident that that electoral process gives you a group of people who are committed to the development of their own stake, rather than their own Swiss bank accounts.  The civil society is an important aspect of that.

 

Let me give you one example.  The new Solomon Islands government decided that it was going to rearm its police force, after we had spent 2.5 years drawing in weapons from the community and one of the greatest areas of leakage had been out of the arms given to the previous police force.  From the outside, we could not override their sovereignty to make that decision.  The civil society groups quickly made it apparent to their government that this was unacceptable and that action would have electoral effects for the government if it proceeded with it.

 

I think we need to work much more with civil society to ensure that you get the results that you want and that, as in most of our societies the government is accountable to its own people because its own people can be organised in some way.  Civil society is a critical part of a functioning and stable society.  The second point is about communication to local people.  What they told me in Afghanistan a few weeks ago was that the Taliban were actually somewhat better at communicating to the local community than the ISAF forces.  Should we be surprised?  Of course not.  The Taliban are indigenous, can speak the language and are in daily contact.  It reminds us that when we are doing things that we think are right, it is important to communicate what we are trying to do, why we are doing it etc.

 

Thirdly, in terms of the effectiveness of our defence forces, pre-deployment training is utterly essential.  I went out with a group of our defence force people on an armed night patrol the other night.  They had been in Timor-Leste for less than a week, but they had enough basic ability to talk to local people, greet them etc.  The attitude of your people on the ground towards those in the area that you are patrolling also sends out a really important message. 

 

We have a very high percentage of indigenous Maori people in our army, who tend to identify very easily with the areas in which we are making deployments.  It is that person to person identification that is critically important as is in fact some of the stuff that you are doing in terms of your development assistance.  If you are operating the medical clinic and people are coming in to see you daily and you are helping them in their daily lives, then they are going to see you as a friend rather than somebody trying to impose themselves on you.

 

A couple of other things very quickly.  One of the real problems that we have got when we have a multilateral deployment is that you have sometimes got ten different countries imposing ten different systems on the one unfortunate country that you are operating in.  Timor-Leste again was a classic example of that.  The Timor-Leste people about 5% of them speak Portuguese, it is now the official language of the justice system and of education yet the vast majority of people were speaking Bahasa, the region speaks Bahasa, why would you come in from outside to encourage or to try to impose yet another language that most people do not accept.  Often ten countries doing different things place impossible pressures on the local community to actually carry out what you want them to do so that harmonisation of effort I think is really important as well.

 

The next point is accept that if you are nation building and not just stabilising it is a long term process.  What did we do wrong in Timor-Leste?   What can we take from that?  Prematurely we felt that we had resolved the situation.  It looked really good in 2002 we neglected as an international community to observe how thin the capabilities were.  Be prepared if you are going to intervene that it is a long term process.  You can do things quite quickly for example with police forces, the new recruits coming into the Solomon Island Police Force replacing a very corrupt previous regime.  The new recruits are great, they are taking to it with enthusiasm, it takes longer to build the leadership.  And when you are building that leadership do not try necessarily to take over the job from the country that you are intervening in, sometimes it is much better to stand behind a local person that might not have the capacity but to have a very senior able person that can provide the mentoring and help them to reach the right decision in a circumstance.

 

There are a dozen other things I do not have time for Mr Chairman.  Can I just come back to Dana Allen’s point about climate change and the range of environmental challenges that can destabilise.  In the Pacific we deal with a lot of very small States, micro-States.  Many of them live on coral atolls that are the highest point is no higher than 1.5 metres.  They feel understandably resentful of many of the people here probably including my own country that they are not the cause of the problem of global warming but they will be the first victims.  The President of the Marshall Islands told me that his country would be the first country to provide environmental refugees to the world.  So you have to understand that this is I mean it will not just destabilise this society it will literally sink their society. 

 

But there are a range of other things that we do from outside, if I can mention to my European Union colleague, one of the things that the Pacific Islands have, they do not have many resources, they are resource poor.  They have fish.  I can mention that maybe to a number of countries here that fish in the Pacific.  If we are to stop destabilising societies, if we are to give them the resources that they can build up their own country we have to respect their entitlement to those resources and stop raiding them for their timber, raiding which is not sustainable.  Stop raiding them for their fisheries.  $20 billion in fish subsidies from the developed world go into help over-fishing the South Pacific and other areas.  So, yes, you know, apart from all of the other things we have talked about, let us respect the impact that we have on those societies.  If we want to build those societies up, work with them to sustain their resource base not to deplete it.

 

I am very glad that my colleagues have taken the Chairman’s advice and answered all the difficult questions and left the easy ones to me.  Let me try and take the various questions in sort of reverse order from inside out.  The specific ones first before I go to the more general ones.

 

If I may answer Admiral Chima’s point, I agree with Admiral Chima.  We need some kind of system for better maritime domain awareness and the various things that Admiral Chima has described, the EIS that the IMO has put into place RECAP, I think all these are very, very good initiatives.  RECAP by the way is a Japanese initiative not a Singapore initiative but is a Japanese initiative which we are very happy to sign on to and which we are happy that many other countries have signed on to and we hope that others will eventually do so as well.

 

There are specific things, which individual countries can do as well.  For example we have a radar surveillance chain in the Singapore streets and they have actually extended the picture to Indonesia’s command centre so that they can see the same picture that we can and I think that indicates a certain level of transparency as well as information sharing and also enables a quicker response when we want to coordinate our activities within the Singapore streets.

 

The ‘Eyes in the Sky’ is a very good example because as Admiral Chima said we may not always have all the resources that we need and we may have to move resources from one place to another.  So the suggestion that came from Deputy Prime Minister Najib was actually quite a novel one and should really be able to deal with sovereignty issues which many countries are concerned about.  His suggestion basically was we take aeroplanes, which have surveillance capability, put the observers from the three littoral states in the back and they can pass information to their command centres in each of the countries. 

 

So really there should be no real concern about sovereignty issues and about looking where we ought not to be looking and looking at things which we do not that you are looking at and so forth because you should be able to see everything.  And in such an arrangement we could really bring about resources for many different countries and carry out the kind of surveillance that we need to in specific areas without having to infringe upon sensitivities and the sovereignty of the individual countries.  So that is a very interesting model that he proposed which I think has good application in the Malacca Straight and has wider applications elsewhere as well, the general principle.  I think that if we can develop this model further and if with the states we can actually agree to expand it a little bit more step by step at a comfort level which is okay for all of them I think we will have a very interesting model which will be very useful.

 

If I may move on to ADMM the ASEAN Defence Minister’s Meeting.  Where are we and where do we want to go?  We have only met once, actually one and a half times.  Kuala Lumpur was the first formal meeting then we had an informal meeting in Bali, kindly hosted by our Indonesian friends and chaired by the current Chairman of the ADMM of the Philippines in Bali and we got to know each other, we got to understand each other’s positions better.  Now there is a good reason why the ASEAN Defence Ministers have taken quite a long time to meet after ASEAN was formed many years ago. 

 

I think there are good historical reasons, we have different historical backgrounds, we have a history with each other as well so it will take a little while for everybody to develop a comfort level with each other but I think the prognosis is good, we have made good process.  We want to move from talking to transparency then to trust and then to some practical action and I think that we will be able to do capacity building, establish norms of behaviour and develop areas of cooperation the easy ones first, maritime security, humanitarian assistance and disaster relief and so on, and we will build on that.

 

We already have a network of service chiefs, defence force chiefs, intelligence chiefs in ASEAN meeting together even before the Ministers met together so there is already a good network of practical people talking about practical things and so I am reasonably confident that we can move head.

 

The other head of ASEAN Defence Ministers Meeting which we will have to address is how fast, who, when, do we want to engage our friends from outside the region and I think establishing the principles for that is important as well and I think the principles that I have proposed for sort of the more general regional architecture are also applicable to the ASEAN Defence Ministers Meeting which is collective responsibility, inclusiveness, mutual respect and an appreciation for international norms and regional norms of behaviour so that is the other aspect of the ADMM that we need to develop.

 

Now if I can address the more general issues of intervention even global warming, whether we have the right toolkit, whether the Cold War has ended and so forth.  I think that we have to look at this issue not just from the intervention and toolkit handle.  In a sense if that were the case then all our defence and security people really have the short end of the stick because all those problems which cannot be solved by anybody else then get dumped on us and then if we cannot solve the problem then it becomes our fault because we have not been creative enough to solve the problem.  But I do not think that is the correct starting point of developing security architecture for the region. 

 

We should really be going back much further up-stream to look at issues which could lead to problems and try and solve those and if you look at the way ASEAN is developing we want to have an ASEAN economic community, we want to have an ASEAN social cultural community and we also want to have an ASEAN security community and I think these three elements interact with each other.  So when you look at the wider region you have APEC which hopes to deal with economic issues and also security issues related to economics so I think we will be able to address those issues beforehand so whether there is Avian Flu, whether it is container security, port security, supply chain security we hope that APEC will be able to deal with some of those issues.  Similarly in the ARF we can move from talking, again I think talk, transparency, trust and then we move into practical areas of cooperation. 

 

But I think we will also develop three layers if you like of cooperation.  At the very broad layer - very large regional groupings like APEC, ARF - I think they are very good for establishing dialogue, talking to each other, understanding each other at a broad regional level so that we understand each other’s concerns we can begin to start identifying gaps and niches, areas where we may need to develop new groupings to address these issues but as a big grouping for them to move into very, very detailed practical cooperation may be more difficult as a whole grouping as a totality.

 

At the next layer we have either sub-regional groupings or functional groupings and I think there a lot of the practical cooperation is actually going to take place.  So you may have countries which are more interested in combating Avian Flu or dealing with maritime security in the Malacca Straights or North-East Asia or humanitarian assistance and disaster relief depending on capacity, depending on interest, depending on inclination they may form more closely with groups like that.

 

And then at the next level you have bilateral linkages which can be very much stronger because individual countries may be able to find much stronger areas of overlap of interest, more greater coincidence in the kind of cooperative activities that they are prepared to undertake with each other.

 

But if we focus on that intermediate group where practical cooperation takes place I think then those principles that I tried to put forward which is that it is collective responsibility then you have to create an inclusive architecture and that we want to do these things in a mutually respectful way respecting of regional and international norms of behaviour.  There I think these principles are important to have the right sort of DNA when we create these functional groups at that intermediate level and do I see the need for more such groupings arising?  I think we will have more such groupings arising but I think one of the important things is we need to keep that architecture there open and inclusive.  It means we have countries come in if they feel a need to, if they have the capacity and the interest to contribute.  We can form a grouping like that but we should keep that membership open so that we can easily bring in others who have an interest, who have the ability t contribute.

 

So I see the next few years as a very interesting few years because in a sense the architecture is being created today, the principles that we lay down, the cooperation that we build up, the trust that we build up, transparency - all this comes from talking to each other.  And I think over the next few years we will see these things take greater shape.

 

Minister Teo, Gough, Jung - thank you very much for your presentations and your very fulsome answers to questions.  I need briefly to conclude indicate our plans for the future and offer a thanks.  In conclusion I think this sixth IISS Shangri-la Dialogue achieved three things in its public and private aspects. 

 

First it helped to achieve better United States, Chinese understandings in the military realm and provided an informal setting for wide official multi-lateral defence diplomacy with China something that was made possible by the deployment over this weekend of a senior delegation from The People’s Liberation Army.  We look forward to every stronger delegations from the PLA as well as from other states so that this process of bilateral dialogue in an inclusive multi-lateral context can continue.

 

Second this Shangri-la Dialogue helped further to connect East Asia, South-East Asia and South Asia into a stronger security community.  The IISS will want to ensure that the weightier South Asia component to this dialogue continues to offer that opportunity.

 

Third, this Shangri-la Dialogue helped to build confidence on the military developments and modernisation programs of some of the regional states as well as to improve especially through the private discussions that took place understandings on the significance to be attached to the various defence cooperation and training programs bilaterally agreed amongst a number of the States. 

 

We at the IISS will continue to build the Shangri-la Dialogue as a Defence Minister led professional security summit and Foreign Ministers will often be welcome here especially from countries whose Defence Minister is the Head of State or Government and therefore the Foreign Minister the better ministerial representative of the defence and security policy of that State.

 

Foreign Ministers are lucky in the Asia Pacific and more widely to have lots of forums and clubs.  Defence Ministers are less fortunate so we will continue to offer the Defence Ministers primary access to this forum.

 

Plans for the future – next year’s Shangri-la Dialogue in 2008 will take place on the 50^th anniversary of the International Institute for Strategic Studies an organisation that we are proud of and which has over those fifty years and for I hope many, many decades to come tried to contribute from an international perspective to sound policy making in the strategic studies field.  And as a result of that we at the IISS will make very special efforts at next year’s Shangri-la Dialogue to invite the largest compliment of countries, arrange for special presentations and strengthen the focus of our discussions in particular in the break-out groups so that those break-out groups can contribute more to the types of expert discussions that have taken place hosted by some of the countries on specific aspects of security issues.

 

In terms of offering thanks I would like first and primarily to offer a thanks to the Government of Singapore and to our sponsors for their extraordinary vital support to this event but I also wish to offer thanks to the 10 members of the IISS staff who supported the over three hundred delegates from 23 countries attending this meeting.  Sarah Grant, Mark Allworthy, Natalie Papacrhistou, Caitlan Brennan, Lorna Williams, Neil Goodman, Valeriane Toon, Pon Souvannaseng, Kate Smith and Kay Floyd.  That group of 10 helped this group of three hundred have such an easy and efficient and professional weekend.  I thank you all very much and I look forward to seeing many of you again on the first weekend of June 2008 for the 7^th Shangri-la Dialogue.