'ASEAN spirit' very strong, says expert

'ASEAN spirit' very strong, says expert

BANGKOK (AFP): Southeast Asia and Indochina are discarding
narrow nationalisms and moving toward an intra-regional identity,
based on shared history and cultures, according to a leading
expert on the region.

Denys Lombard, director of the Ecole Francaise d'Extreme-
Orient (EFEO), a Paris-based research institute, said in an
interview with AFP that politicians were among the last to
acknowledge that common ground.

But other sectors were slowly moving away from the use of
Western nations as a basis for comparisons and instead are taking
a fresh look at the region itself for points of reference,
Lombard said.

"A common culture linking countries from Vietnam through
Indonesia might, at first glance, seem surprising to a European,
but the idea is definitely in the air," he said.

"Wherever we go, the ASEAN spirit is very strong," said
Lombard, who was in Bangkok to sign a memorandum of understanding
Thursday with the Thai government officializing research
cooperation.

He was referring to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations
(ASEAN) -- Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines,
Singapore and Thailand -- plus their neighbors Myanmar, Cambodia,
Laos and Vietnam.

The EFEO has agreements with most of the countries of the
region, and expects to sign an accord with Myanmar by the end of
the year, giving the institute a "permanent presence" there,
Lombard said.

The EFEO -- perhaps best known for its restoration projects in
Cambodia's Angkor temple complex -- has sent archeologists,
anthropologists, historians, ethnologists and other researchers
to work in countries from Japan to India for close to a century.

In Southeast Asia particularly, the colonial heritage left a
very "compartmentalized" view of history in each country, Lombard
observed.

"We would like to integrate the various histories of the
various countries of Southeast Asia, to try to re-think the
history of the region as a whole," he said.

Both Lombard and Pierre-Francois Souyri, the EFEO director of
studies, denied there was competition among outsiders for a
foothold in Southeast Asia, notably for prestige projects such as
Angkor.

Given the "fabulous sums" required to restore sites such as
Angkor, "it is out of the question that a single country -- and
all the more so a single institution -- could bear the burden,"
Souyri said.