ASEAN prepares for eventual aid summit with Japan

ASEAN prepares for eventual aid summit with Japan

HANOI (AFP): Southeast Asian finance officials wrapped up two
days of talks on Friday that prepared the stage for a summit with
Japan, but stopped short of spelling out a common approach on the
use of promised aid from Tokyo.

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) officials
discussed Japanese plans to help stricken Asian economies,
including a 30-billion-dollar initiative unveiled by Finance
Minister Kiichi Miyazawa, delegates said.

At the two days of talks which ended Friday, they also heard a
proposal advanced by the Jakarta-based ASEAN secretariat for a
collective fund that could be set up with Japanese aid.

ASEAN deputy secretary-General Suthad Setboonsang said however
at the end of the meeting that while the idea of a collective
fund was "good," "there are many ideas that are floating" on the
use of the money.

"But I don't know whether ... we're going to have a common
position," he said. "They'll resolve among themselves in ASEAN,"
he said.

In Tokyo, a senior government spokesman said Friday that Japan
wants to press ahead with an Asian fund to deliver financial aid
to its ailing neighbors despite strong US opposition to similar
plans in the past.

Suthad noted Japan had come out with a series of proposals.
Besides the Miyazawa package, which may be enlarged, Prime
Minister Keizo Obuchi will next week offer new loans worth some
eight billion dollars to Japanese firms working in the region,
according to Japanese officials.

In addition Japan has agreed a five-billion-dollar aid program
with the United States, of which Tokyo will give three billion
dollars.

"There are so many funds ... I don't know how they are going
to lay them out at the end. Let's wait and see," Suthad said.
He said there was no proposal to force "Japan into anything" on
how the aid should be channeled or who should get how much.
T he Miyazawa fund was targeted at four ASEAN members --
Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines and Thailand -- as well as
South Korea, whose President Kim Dae-Jung will also attend the
summit here Wednesday.

But Vietnam has also asked for help under the scheme. Other
ASEAN members are Brunei, Laos, Myanmar and Singapore.
Obuchi is expected to spell out details of the various Japanese
proposals to help ailing ASEAN economies as well as plans to lift
his own country out of recession.

"They (Japanese) will be coming out with more details than
were previously known," ASEAN secretary-general Rodolfo Severino
said. "There are certain areas in which Japan and ASEAN can
cooperate."

The finance officials' talks also discussed prospects of
forging a common negotiating strategy with Japan, delegates said.

"We want to deal with the Japanese not as each country but as
a group," an Indonesian official said.

"We want to try to avoid the Japanese dealing with us
individually," he said. "If we deal with it as a group, we'll
have more bargaining power."

Tokyo and ASEAN pushed hard last year for a regional fund that
would have been funded with Japanese money to rescue economies in
crisis.

But the proposal was killed by strong opposition from the
United States and multilateral agencies such as the International
Monetary Fund, which believed it was a ploy to undercut stringent
conditions attached to IMF aid.

The finance officials also finalized contributions to
communiques to be issued at the end of the summit, which will
focus on ways to extricate the region from crisis and put it back
on the path of growth.

Severino said they were "most interested" in forging
cooperation between their financial institutions.