ASEAN integration, E. Asian cooperation top issues in summit
ASEAN integration, E. Asian cooperation top issues in summit
SINGAPORE (AFP): Steps to further integrate 10 countries comprising the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and expand cooperation with China, Japan and South Korea will take center stage at a leaders' summit here later this month, officials said Wednesday.
At the meeting from Nov. 24-25, the ASEAN leaders are also expected to sign an "e-ASEAN framework" aimed at facilitating the linkage of the diverse region through the Internet.
Michael Tay, the Singapore foreign ministry's ASEAN pointman, said that while the summit will be informal without any fixed agenda, the region's leaders were expected to tackle challenges facing ASEAN on the political and economic fronts.
"The leaders will spend some time discussing where ASEAN is going" as well as "concrete steps that have to be taken to move ASEAN forward," Tay said in a media briefing.
ASEAN, which groups Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam, needs greater economic integration in order to become a credible organization, Tay said.
The group's 10 members vary in culture, political systems and stages of economic development.
Critics have written off ASEAN as a "sunset organization", saying that it failed to respond adequately to the Asian financial crisis in 1997 that severely affected four of its members.
ASEAN's long-standing policy of non-interference in members' internal affairs has also come under fire from the West amid the political crackdown in Myanmar and the brutality by pro- Indonesian militias just after East Timor voted for independence.
Tay said strengthening the cooperation with China, Japan and South Korea under the ASEAN plus three process was also expected to top the agenda.
Chinese Premier Zhu Rongji, Japanese Prime Minister Yoshiro Mori and South Korean President Kim Dae Jung are expected to attend the summit.
"The leaders will discuss how they see the future of East Asia," Tay said, adding they would try to come up with "concrete steps to move the ASEAN plus three process forward."
The ASEAN plus three process, which still has to adopt a formal name, "is not a bloc, it is a process still," Tay said.
ASEAN leaders as a group will also hold one on one meetings with the Chinese, Japanese and South Korean leaders.
The meeting with Japan will center on the results of a report by academics and the private sector on how to advance ASEAN-Japan ties.
South Korea's Kim is expected to brief the ASEAN leaders of the progress in talks with the communist North Korea and South Korea's efforts to sustain economic reforms, Tay said.
Despite political trouble in some ASEAN countries, no leader has signified his intention to skip the meeting, Tay said.
ASEAN leaders hold formal summits every two years, with informal meetings held in between.
Meanwhile, a code of conduct to ease tensions in the South China Sea was unlikely to be signed during a summit of ASEAN leaders in Singapore later this month, an official said Wednesday.
"It looks like it won't be signed because the negotiations are still ongoing," Tay told a news briefing.
Further meetings were to be held next year to iron out differences, he said. Tay, however, did not specify the issues holding up the signing of the code to govern conduct in the Spratlys, a chain of islands in the South China Sea.
There had been expectations the code would be signed during the Nov. 24-25 informal summit in Singapore of the leaders of the 10 ASEAN members. The summit will be preceded by a meeting of foreign ministers from Nov. 22-23.