ASEAN leaders prepare to add emphasis to East Asia ties
ASEAN leaders prepare to add emphasis to East Asia ties
MANILA (Reuters): Southeast Asian leaders will take the unusual step of revising the draft agreement for a weekend summit in Manila to sharpen plans for greater trade and financial cooperation with Japan, China and South Korea.
A minister-level meeting of the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) decided on Friday that the draft, finalized by senior diplomats earlier in the week, "be extensively reviewed to reflect the seriousness of ASEAN to pursue its goal for East Asia."
Usually, ASEAN's draft agreements are endorsed by summit meetings with little or no change. The language of the ministers' recommendation was blunt in terms of international diplomacy and officials privately said it reflected an urgent desire to speed up regional integration.
Sunday's summit of ASEAN was expected to agree on ways to deepen cooperation with the three northern economic powerhouses as the first step toward an East Asia-wide common market.
The draft agreement referred in general terms to carrying forward cooperation between Southeast Asia and China, Japan and South Korea, according to a copy made available to Reuters.
Friday's meeting of the region's foreign, financial and economic ministers said "the joint statement (should) go beyond...the manner of structure (and) implement the program as a matter of priority attention."
The leaders of ASEAN -- Brunei, Cambodia, Laos, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam -- will meet the heads of government of China, Japan and South Korea on Sunday immediately after their own summit.
Common market
ASEAN is well on its way for a free trade area by 2002 and ministers have said this could be expanded in future to its three northern neighbors and then to North Korea and Mongolia.
It also wants to broaden cooperation to align financial markets and has talked of creating a "common market", which could eventually include use of a single East Asian currency.
Philippine Finance Secretary Edgardo Espiritu said on Friday such a common currency might be 30 years away but other forms of regional economic cooperation could come much more quickly. "Our future depends on our relations with our neighbors," he told Reuters in an interview.
"We are subjected to external pressure that we may not be able to control. That is why there is need to look at what China is going to do, what Japan is going to do, what South Korea is going to do," he said.
Any East Asian common market would face seemingly insurmountable barriers such as the rivalry between China and Japan, the Taiwan problem and the divide between the Koreas.
But the realities of globalization and economic pragmatism are powerful inducements to move forward. For ASEAN, desperate to regain the high growth rates that were blighted by the 1997/98 financial crisis, regional cooperation has become essential.
Thai Foreign Minister Surin Pitsuwan told reporters ministers wanted to prevent tensions and conflicts in the region and ensure recovery through greater cooperation on human resources, technological development and the creation of social safety nets.
"The crisis has given us the wake-up call that we cannot live in isolation," he said.
Japan is seen as the linchpin for future cooperation.
Officials in Tokyo have said Japan would announce a new program at the summit to help Southeast Asian nations get more technological training, a key thrust in an effort to build regional competitiveness in information technology industries.
"This is in the right direction", Surin said. "It will help us shift towards an independent, self-sustained and home-grown development of technology within Asia."
On Sunday, nine of the ASEAN leaders will meet executives from global software and telecommunications companies to try to improve use of high technology and the Internet in the region.
Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad will not attend due to his country's general election.