Jakarta. ASEAN Secretary-General Kao Kim Hourn on Tuesday spoke of China's possibility of signing a pledge to not use nuclear weapons against Southeast Asian countries, just days after Malaysia dropped a similar hint.

ASEAN over the past years has been trying to get the five of the so-called “nuclear weapon states” into signing its Southeast Asia Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone (SEANWFZ) pact amidst efforts to keep the region peaceful and stable. The Non-Proliferation Treaty defines nuclear weapon states as those that had manufactured and denoted a nuclear explosive device prior to 1967. And they are China, France, Russia, the UK, and the US. Accession to the SEANWFZ protocol means that they agree to not launch or threaten to use nukes in Southeast Asia.

According to ASEAN Secretary-General Kao Kim Hourn, the bloc’s efforts on the anti-nuclear agreement will likely make some progress, as Beijing has shown a “strong desire” to sign the treaty. He, however, did not give a specific time frame on when China would accede to the SEANWFZ protocol.

“China has expressed a strong desire to move forward with the accession to the SEANWFZ treaty,” Kao Kim Hourn told a briefing at the ASEAN Secretariat in Jakarta on Tuesday.

The regional grouping also pushed new member Timor Leste to ink the SEANWFZ treaty.

While Timor Leste is not a nuclear weapon state, the country still lies within Southeast Asia. ASEAN has also accepted Timor Leste as its 11th member “in principle”, while also making it an observer to the bloc. This observer status enables Timor Leste to partake in ASEAN’s meetings.

“The [ASEAN] ministers called on Timor Leste to sign the SEANWFZ treaty. Timor Leste is located within Southeast Asia, and it is an observer to ASEAN,” Kao Kim Hourn said.

China previously has been hinting at its willingness to sign the SEANWFZ, although ASEAN has yet seen Beijing actually inking the pact. Chinese President Xi Jinping in 2021 even said that Beijing was prepared to accede to the SEANWFZ protocol “as early as possible”. On the sidelines of last week’s ASEAN Summit in Jakarta, Malaysian Foreign Affairs Minister Zambry Abdul Kadir told reporters that China had given its word to agree to the SEANWFZ “unconditionally".

Will the US Sign the Treaty?
Questions also arise about whether other nuclear weapon states such as the US will sign the SEANWFZ. Especially since the US and the UK have agreed to help Australia acquire nuclear-powered submarines under a trilateral defense pact called AUKUS. US Secretary of State Antony Blinken during his Jakarta visit last week only briefly commented on the SEANWFZ.

“With regard to the SEANWFZ Treaty, the US is deeply committed to a rules-based nonproliferation regime, and this is true across the board,” Blinken told a press briefing in Jakarta last week after he concluded his foreign policy talks with his ASEAN counterparts.

“We very much appreciate ASEAN’s leadership on this issue, and we very much look forward to continuing and in fact intensifying our consultations with ASEAN,” he said.