Will Jakarta Become Brussels of the East?

On Jan. 1, Vietnam assumed the chairmanship of ASEAN for 2010. As ASEAN foreign ministers concluded their meeting last week in the coastal Vietnamese city of Da Nang to demonstrate and discuss the physical connectivity of the region, Indonesia should contemplate another kind of connectivity about its place in the world.

We can start this process by asking, can Jakarta become the Brussels of the East?

Indonesia has been host to the ASEAN Secretariat since 1967. It was the late president Soeharto who had the foresight to establish the headquarters in Jakarta under an agreement between the government of Indonesia and ASEAN relating to the privileges and immunities of the ASEAN Secretariat of Jan. 20, 1979.