ASEAN to decide on Cambodia

ASEAN to decide on Cambodia

KUALA LUMPUR (DPA): ASEAN foreign ministers are expected to make a decision on whether to accept Cambodia as a new member of the regional grouping when they meet next month in New York, reports said yesterday.

The foreign ministers from the nine-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) will be in New York to attend the new session of the UN General Assembly.

Cambodia was set to join ASEAN July 1997, together with Myanmar and Laos, as the regional grouping's newest members. But ASEAN postponed Cambodia's entry after strongman Hun Sen ousted his copremier Norodom Ranariddh in a coup that same month.

ASEAN then tasked the foreign ministers of Indonesia, Thailand and the Philippines -- the so-called ASEAN troika -- to mediate between the Cambodian factions and to monitor the July 26 general election which was won by Hun Sen's Cambodian People's Party.