On January 14th and 15th respectively, the ASEAN+3 Summit (APT) and East Asia
Summit (EAS) were held at Cebu Island, the Philippines. Although their significance islarge as regional summit meetings held once a year toward the building of an East Asian
community, it is hard to say that the reporting of the meetings by the Japanese press caught
the whole picture of these summits in both scale and content. The Council on East Asian
Community (CEAC) invited Mr. ATSUMI Chihiro, Director‐General, Southeast andSouthwest Asian Affairs Department, and Mr. AIKAWA Kazutoshi, Director of Regional
Policy Division of Asian and Oceanian Affairs Bureau at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, tothe 19th Policy Plenary Meeting on January 30th. Participants received a briefing andactively exchanged views. Based on the outcome of the Policy Plenary Meeting, the CEAC
Secretariat has prepared a memorandum as follows.
CEAC Secretariat

The 10th ASEAN+3 Summit and the 2nd East
Asia Summit (Memorandum)
1. Background and Outline
The ASEAN+3 Summit (APT) was held on January 14th and the East Asia Summit(EAS) on the following day, January 15th, at Cebu Island, the Philippines. The ASEAN
Summit was held prior to these two summits on January 13th, while the ASEAN‐Japan
Summit and the Summit Meeting of the People’s Republic of China, Japan and the Republicof Korea were also held on 14th. Although these meetings were originally scheduled to beheld in December of last year, the government of the Philippines suddenly announced their
postponement, due to a typhoon, just before convening the summits and then rescheduled
them for January.
APT, consisting of ASEAN countries, Japan, China and Korea, had the first summit
meeting in December, 1997, in the midst of the Asian currency crisis. Since then, the APT
meeting has been held annually and has produced concrete progress towards regional
cooperation, such as the Chiang Mai Initiative. On the other hand, EAS, which consists of
16 countries (India, Australia, and New Zealand, in addition to the 13 countries of APT),
was held for the first time in December, 2005, followed by the second meeting this time.
Given the situation that the two frameworks of APT and EAS coexist, how regional
cooperation will be developed in Asia has been the center of attention. Because of thesudden postponement of the summit meetings by the government of the Philippines,
concern spread about whether the momentum of regional cooperation would be lost.
However, all the leaders gathered in Cebu with the exception of the absence of theIndonesian President from EAS, and concrete outcomes, such as the adoption of the “Cebu
Declaration on East Asian Energy Security,” have been produced. Therefore, the summits
in Cebu can be positively evaluated. In any event, it is indispensable to maintain themomentum of regional cooperation and to promote concrete measures in various areas,
thereby forming a network of close regional cooperation.
2. Evaluation(1) Concrete progress in the area of regional cooperation
Worthy of special mention as an outcome of a series of meetings is the adoption of
the “Cebu Declaration on East Asian Energy Security” at EAS. In an East Asia which
continues to growth through a dynamic process of economic development, a further rapid
increase of demand for energy is expected in the future. Therefore the necessity of regional
cooperation to spread energy‐saving technology and to stably secure energy is very high.
In such circumstances, it deserves attention that setting goals and formulating action plans,
as well as encouraging the use of biofuels and so on, were included in the adopted
declaration. In addition, its adoption at EAS means that the declaration includes not only
China but also India, which is similarly achieving a rapid economic growth. So it can bethought of as appropriate as a framework.
Focusing on Japan, Prime Minister ABE announced that Japan will accept trainees
and provide financial and technical assistance in order to promote energy‐saving
technology and biofuels, which was praised by other countries. Because this initiative will
be a great contribution to energy cooperation, as Japanese, we should also highly evaluate
such an active response by the Japanese government.
Meanwhile, the other priority areas for cooperation at EAS other than energy areeducation, natural disaster management, avian influenza and finance, on which the start ofconcrete cooperation was also mentioned. Equally, APT also paid attention to the recent
expansion of cooperation in the areas of women’s issues, poverty alleviation, disastermanagement and minerals.
In this way, relationships of regional cooperation in Asia are being concretely
established in various areas. It is imperative to continue to promote such developments
steadily into the future.
(2) The Relationship of APT and EAS

After the first meeting of EAS was held in 2005, its relationship with APT, which
was already functioning as a framework for regional cooperation, has been questioned. In
the declarations in 2005, it was recognized that APT would “continue to be the mainvehicle,” while EAS was expected to “play a significant role.” Therefore, the strong
impression was that EAS would discuss community building from a broader viewpoint,
while APT would take the lead in concrete regional cooperation measures. However, thistime, while APT confirmed the direction of the Second Joint Statement on East Asia
Cooperation to be adopted in the next Summit of APT, EAS showed a concrete picture of
regional cooperation by adopting the “Cebu Declaration on East Asian Energy Security.”
Therefore, it seems that the roles of APT and EAS have been somewhat reversed.
With regard to the coexistence of two frameworks, APT and EAS, some people insist
that APT should serve as the core framework if we take into consideration theachievements of the APT and the geographical concept of “Asia.” On the other hand,
others argue that the framework of EAS would be beneficial for Japan because moreindustrialized and democratic countries are involved. However, if we look at the actual
progress, it would be no problem if we do not decide at this moment which framework
should be chosen.
It is true that a situation in which the framework of regional cooperation is notdecided would be difficult to understand and pose a sort of uncertainty to the region. But,conversely, such a situation would make it possible for realizable measures to be taken inaccordance with the features of APT and EAS (or other regional frameworks such as APEC)
in each area of cooperation. Therefore, at least for the time being, we can expect several
frameworks to be formed in a multi‐layered way and to play complementary roles to eachother.
Thus, the following two descriptions can both be thought of as appropriate: that“APT is an essential part of the evolving regional architecture, complementary to the East
Asia Summit and other regional fora,” in the Chairman’s Statement of APT; as well as that“the EAS complements other existing regional mechanisms, including the ASEAN dialogue
process, the ASEAN+3 process, the ARF, and APEC in community building efforts,” in theChairman’s Statement of EAS.
(3) Evaluation on the role of NEAT
Another issue which should be noted from the viewpoint of the Council of East
Asian Community is that the Chairman’s Statement of APT has referred to our activities in
one independent paragraph, saying “we also noted the Memorandum No.3 on Policy
Recommendations on Strengthening the Pillars of East Asian Community Building,prepared by the Network of East Asian Think Tanks (NEAT), which may form part of thestocktaking of APT cooperation.” It can be said that a fair evaluation of the role of NEAT in
the process of the development of regional cooperation in Asia is now being built. This
makes us realize again the importance of continuing active intellectual contributions
through NEAT.