ASEAN delivers the HOGs and HOS

KUALA LUMPUR – In the alphabet soup of Asian diplomacy, a HOG’s no animal, the ARF doesn’t bark, and everybody’s in the same ZOPFAN.

A summit without acronyms is like a day without SEANWFZ – as the old saying goes – and the annual ASEAN summit in Kuala Lumpur is once again serving up bewildering pile-ups of letters. Some of the babble has become universal, with shorthand tags for heads of government (HOG) and heads of state (HOS) a useful way to make the mills of diplomacy grind just that tiny bit more easily.But other constructions have simply turned the unwieldy phrase into …another unwieldy phrase.Or as one summit veteran put it: when BIMP-EAGA meets IMT-GT, can CMLV be far behind? BIMP-EAGA means the Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines-East Asia Growth Area – an economic zone comprised of the nearby regions in the four neighbouring countries.IMT-GT is the Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand Growth Triangle.And CMLV refers to ASEAN’s poorer countries – Cambodia, Myanmar, Laos and Vietnam.AMM is the annual ministerial meeting of foreign ministers and AEM is the annual economic ministers gathering.The ASEAN Regional Forum, or ARF, is something else altogether.But gatherings like that can never take place without a SOM (senior officials’ meeting) and SEOM (senior economics officials’ meeting) first ironing out the contentious issues.Meanwhile, experts know that SEANWFZ, the Southeast Asia Nuclear Weapons Free Zone treaty, is pronounced ‘shy-an-foo-ezz’.There’s even widespread agreement that ACMECS is easier to say than the Ayeyawady-Chao Phraya-Mekong Economic Co-operation Strategy.As for the journalists struggling to keep up with all the verbiage, they’ll be waiting for the event to wind down tomorrow, and their lives once again become a zone of peace, freedom and neutrality (ZOPFAN).Or at least that’s what SEOM people say.- Nampa-AFPSome of the babble has become universal, with shorthand tags for heads of government (HOG) and heads of state (HOS) a useful way to make the mills of diplomacy grind just that tiny bit more easily.But other constructions have simply turned the unwieldy phrase into …another unwieldy phrase.Or as one summit veteran put it: when BIMP-EAGA meets IMT-GT, can CMLV be far behind? BIMP-EAGA means the Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, Philippines-East Asia Growth Area – an economic zone comprised of the nearby regions in the four neighbouring countries.IMT-GT is the Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand Growth Triangle.And CMLV refers to ASEAN’s poorer countries – Cambodia, Myanmar, Laos and Vietnam.AMM is the annual ministerial meeting of foreign ministers and AEM is the annual economic ministers gathering.The ASEAN Regional Forum, or ARF, is something else altogether.But gatherings like that can never take place without a SOM (senior officials’ meeting) and SEOM (senior economics officials’ meeting) first ironing out the contentious issues.Meanwhile, experts know that SEANWFZ, the Southeast Asia Nuclear Weapons Free Zone treaty, is pronounced ‘shy-an-foo-ezz’.There’s even widespread agreement that ACMECS is easier to say than the Ayeyawady-Chao Phraya-Mekong Economic Co-operation Strategy.As for the journalists struggling to keep up with all the verbiage, they’ll be waiting for the event to wind down tomorrow, and their lives once again become a zone of peace, freedom and neutrality (ZOPFAN).Or at least that’s what SEOM people say.- Nampa-AFP