Media and public attention to the ASEAN Regional Forum is most intensively, almost exclusively focused on the annual ministerial meeting, partly because of the high-profile personalities in attendance and partly in anticipation of some breakthrough — which often never comes — in the headline issue of the day. A large media entourage invariably accompanies the United States’ Secretary of State. Most of them not specialists on East Asia, the American journalists often train their coverage on issues pertaining to U.S. domestic politics, to the situation in the Middle East or to some crisis unfolding in another region of the world. Large numbers of Japanese media personnel also cover Japan's foreign minister and, like their American colleagues, are focused on domestic politics and international headline material. What the public generally does not know and the media often ignore are the many meetings, seminars, workshops and exercises that the ARF conducts between ministerial meetings throughout the year. Such activities, described as “inter-sessional” — that is, between ministerial meetings or sessions — contribute to networking and, at their best, to confidence-building and the capacity to work together at the operational level. Although not the stuff of headlines, they can be building blocks for the security “architecture” of which the ARF is a part.

These activities may be categorized into:

1. • arms control or management;

2. • military cooperation;

3. • essentially civilian endeavours that use mainly military assets and personnel and civil-military relations;

4. • civilian undertakings not involving anything military but meant to respond to dangers that are increasingly regarded as security threats, the so-called “non-traditional”, non-military security issues;

5. • the exchange of security perceptions; and

6. • the ARF process.

ARMS CONTROL AND MANAGEMENT

Almost from the beginning, the ARF has expressed its concern over the issue of the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, particularly of the nuclear variety. The second ministerial meeting, in 1995, welcomed the commitment of all parties to the Treaty on the Non-proliferation of Nuclear Weapons (NPT) to conclude a Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) by 1996, called for the cessation of all nuclear-weapons tests, and endorsed nuclear weapons-free zones, positions reiterated by the July 1996 meeting. The ARF's constant preoccupation with North Korea's nuclear weapons programme reflects its participants’ concern over nuclear proliferation, as well as over the broader tensions on the Korean peninsula, which have long been widely considered as a threat to the region's stability.