ASEAN officials meet ahead of summit

ASEAN officials meet ahead of summit

HANOI (AFP): Members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) worked to put final touches on documents in advance of a summit here, the ASEAN secretary general said on Tuesday.

Officials ended the first of two days of meetings to put the finishing touches on the Hanoi Declaration and Plan of Action, to be issued at the conclusion of the ASEAN Summit looking at ways out of the financial crisis.

"They are talking of ways to speed up AFTA and how to phase out tariffs as early as possible," Jerry Reyes, secretariat program coordinator for culture and information said.

A new plan would see an acceleration of a schedule to reduce tariffs to five percent or zero percent within the ASEAN Free Trade Area before the current target of 2003.

Discussions are also centered on how to make ASEAN more attractive as an investment destination.

"ASEAN has made it clear that for foreign investment to return in adequate amounts we have to hasten the integration of the ASEAN economy," Severino said.

"The crisis has pushed ASEAN into greater cohesion and cooperation as will be evident when the Hanoi Plan of Action comes out," he added.

However it was not clear what the overall plan of ASEAN recovery would look like given the differing responses of each country, said Hadenan Jalil, deputy secretary general for trade of the Ministry of Trade and Industry for Malaysia.

"Each country facing the crisis is different and have their own way of handling it," he said.

The directors-general will be looking into the agenda for the ASEAN plus three meetings held with Japan, South Korea and China, Reyes said.