BEIJING, June 28- Former Malaysian Prime Minister Tun Abdullah Ahmad Badawi Thursday described the Asian century as one that is full of promise but fraught with challenges.
He said there was a need to recognise the challenges, including non-traditional security challenges, and added that security was no longer the sole purview of states.
Abdullah said the United Nations Security Council (UNSC) would have to play a larger role to manage international security, and that the UNSC and the international community could no longer hide behind the paralysing politics of the Cold War to justify their inaction.
“If we were to succeed in facilitating the transition from the parochial and divisive emphasis on national interest to the pursuit of a common good, this change needs to take root within the UNSC,” he said in his keynote address at the 2013 World Peace Forum on “Innovation and International Security”, here.
Abdullah also said that the world had become increasingly interdependent.
“The interdependence, including economic interdependence, compels us to rethink and reconceptualise security as ‘common’,” he said.
Citing Chengdu, the capital of Sichuan province in Southwest China which has attracted the majority of Fortune 500 corporations for investment, Abdullah said it would have been unimaginable for it to host operations of over half of the world’s 500 largest corporations 30 or 40 years ago without the investment of other countries, including Japan.
Japan has proclaimed that 238 of the 500 companies in the Fortune Global 500 had set up operations in Chengdu.
“Chengdu’s success story has not only reaffirmed China’s magnetism in pulling in investments and new businesses, but also demonstrated that the world is more inter-connected,” Abdullah said.
He said that instead of emphasising rifts, fault lines, threats and the quarrels of the past, the world should focus on partnerships and the prospects of a prosperous common future.
Abdullah also said that the temptation to allow “might is right” should be resisted.
“Instead of fuelling narrow nationalisms, let us cultivate in our children a sense of belonging to a wider region where borders are going to matter less and mutual understanding is going to be crucial more than ever before,” he said.
The two-day 2013 World Peace Forum, themed “International Security in a Changing World: Peace, Development, Innovation”, which started today, is being held at Tsinghua University here.
The forum focuses on new concepts and ways of managing threats with the intention of solving problems and avoiding the possible escalation of disputes, and aims to promote cooperation among nations in the realm of international security in order to create a lasting peace.
– BERNAMA
