ASEAN to urge nuclear states to respect pact
ASEAN to urge nuclear states to respect pact
KUALA LUMPUR (Agencies): Senior officials from the Association
of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) will meet today to urge the
world's five main nuclear powers to respect a treaty banning
nuclear weapons from the region.
The three-day meeting will be attended by officials from
ASEAN's seven members of Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia,
Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam, as well as would-be
entrants Myanmar, Cambodia and Laos, a foreign ministry official
said.
The meeting will explore how the five nuclear states could
accede to the protocol of the Southeast Asian Nuclear Weapons
Free Zone treaty, the official was quoted as saying by Bernama
news agency.
Tomorrow, the ASEAN officials will meet representatives from
nuclear powers Britain, China, France, Russia and the United
States to resolve problems in certain provisions of the protocol,
he said.
The treaty, forged at ASEAN's 1995 Bangkok meeting, came into
force on March 27 and forbids the acquisition, development, use,
testing and stationing of nuclear arms in the region.
The Bangkok declaration urged the five nuclear states to back
the treaty but none of them have so far signed an associated
protocol to affirm support for the zone.
The United States had wanted modification to the treaty and
protocol before giving its support.
Meanwhile, Singapore's Deputy Prime Minister/Minister of
Defense Tony Tan is scheduled to open a regional security meeting
in the city-state tomorrow.
The one-day meeting is organized by the Council for Security
Cooperation in the Asia-Pacific (CSCAP), a regional body founded
by 10 private strategic institutes in June 1993 in Kuala Lumpur.
The council, which now has 18 members, is not a formal
intergovernmental body although each of the institutions has a
close link with its respective government.
The 10 founding members are strategic institutions from
Indonesia, the Philippines, Malaysia, Thailand, Singapore,
Australia, Canada, Japan, South Korea and the United States. The
others are from China, North Korea, the European Union, India,
Russia, New Zealand, Vietnam and Mongolia.
CSCAP, which invites government officials in their private
capacity to its meetings, aims at preventing potential conflicts
in the post-Cold War Asia-Pacific region.