Burma: ASEAN to the fore

The 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) faces an important test of its relevance and utility as it steps into a lead role this week in cyclone relief in Burma on behalf of the international community.

Burma hosts a 'pledging' conference in Rangoon on Sunday to discuss the response to Cyclone Nargis, which left 2.5 million people destitute when it struck the country two weeks ago. Rangoon has also agreed to accept more aid received via ASEAN, and to the immediate dispatch of ASEAN medical teams.

Much has been made of reclusive 74-year-old junta leader Than Shwe making a rare appearance at a relief camp in Rangoon, the city he deserted in 2005 for a remote new capital in the north. Yet the junta has been heavily criticised for its response to the disaster, which it estimates caused damage worth 10 billion dollars. As well as the thousands who have died, the plight of survivors in the hardest-hit Irrawaddy Delta and elsewhere is worsening. With the junta declining repeated offers of help from the West, ASEAN has become the key focus of international attempts to stage a meaningful relief operation. Lacking both the willingness and the capacity to stage such a mission itself, the junta is under enormous pressure.

Yet t he staging of a conference in Rangoon -- rather than in Bangkok, as proposed by the UN -- provides an early indicator of the balance of power between the regional group and its wayward member.