When more than 40 heads of government from Asia and Europe meet in Beijing later this week, the devastating aftermath of the US financial crisis will inevitably dominate the discussion.

This overwhelming issue, while it offers timely agenda for the biannual meeting, could pull the Asia-Europe Meeting away from its originally intended role – the practicability of which is being widely questioned 12 years after its inception.

The "financial tsunami" from Wall Street is sweeping nations in Europe and Asia in diverse ways. Leaders of the 27 members of the European Union, the 10 ASEAN countries and the three Northeast Asian states of the Republic of Korea (ROK), Japan and China will all have much to say about their own troubles and about collective measures to overcome the turmoil.

Yet, the exclusion of the United States from the forum could limit the significance of the two-day conference on Friday and Saturday.

An array of items are on the agenda for the ASEM 7 conference, under the theme "Vision and Action: Toward a Win-Win Solution".

Topics include education, the environment, sustainable development, human rights, climate change, energy, food security, counterterrorism and the Asian region's two pressing political issues of the Thai-Cambodian border dispute and the nuclear issue of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, in addition to the financial problems.

The ROK's President Lee Myung-bak, for his part, is expected to press for speedy action to create an $80 billion regional fund to help protect Asian economies from the financial crisis. Other leaders from Asian and European states will come forward with their own ideas of collective steps to cope with the unprecedented global emergency.

With a preoccupation on financial matters, it is hard to expect the participants to direct their attention to other fundamental issues related to ASEM's objective of creating a balanced world order.

In the mid-1990s, following the end of the Cold War, an economically dynamic East Asia and an increasingly integrated Europe saw a mutually beneficial future in their partnership and interdependence. Asian and European leaders aimed to complete a triangular cooperative system by linking their two regions in a world which already had close trans-Pacific and trans-Atlantic ties, both economic and political.

But different interests and perceptions among its main players have held ASEM back from making a strong start. Contrary to the initial optimism of closer international cooperation on the basis of multilateral ties, the world has since become increasingly fractious, according to a 2006 joint report by European and Asian study groups.

Researchers from the University of Helsinki and Japan Center for International Exchange determined that dialogue through ASEM was broad but not deep. They said the process failed to produce substantive cooperation in the three main fields – political, economic and socio-cultural – especially compared to the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum.

"ASEM has not been able to enhance the balance of power in the triangle remarkably," the report concluded.

In Beijing, officials from the European Commission and the ASEAN Secretariat will try hard to produce agreements of substance, considering the urgent global financial situation. We sincerely hope that their efforts, with the active participation of the Asian and European leaders, will bear fruit. Such achievements would improve confidence in governments and businesses worldwide at this difficult time.

The ASEM summit in Beijing, by all accounts, is about to decide the future of the inter-regional forum. It will decide whether it will grow to a dependable axis for global cooperation or will deteriorate to become a lame body unable to address pressing global issues, remaining an "informal, loose and non-binding" channel of dialogue as its operational principle guides.

The Korea Herald/Asia News Network

(China Daily October 22, 2008)