Asian lawmakers meet in Cambodia

Asian lawmakers meet in Cambodia

PHNOM PENH (AFP): Asian lawmakers will begin five days of
talks in newly-peaceful Cambodia on Monday to map out strategies
for promoting peace in the region, officials said.

The second Association of Asian Parliaments for Peace (AAPP)
will be attended by lawmakers from more than 25 nations,
including the ASEAN 10, China, North Korea, Iran, Japan, Russia,
and Sri Lanka.

"The purpose is to strengthen the culture of peace in Asia,"
Prince Norodom Ranariddh, who is Cambodia's national assembly
president and AAPP vice-president, told reporters earlier.

"All the members of the association unanimously requested
Cambodia to host it because they know we used to suffer from
political instability, wars, including a genocidal regime," he
said.

"The organization of the conference means that Cambodia is
finally totally at peace."

Cambodia's decades of civil war and genocide ended in 1998
with the death of former Khmer Rouge supremo Pol Pot and mass
defection of rebel troops.

Bangladeshi Prime Minister Sheikh Hasina Wajed, who is serving
as the current AAPP president, arrived Sunday on her first visit
to Cambodia for the opening of the peace parliament.

She was met on arrival by Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen and
will hold talks with him later in the day.

"I am very happy to be here. It's a great country and has many
similarities (to Bangladesh), the environment and the history,
the struggle for independence," she told reporters on arrival.

The Phnom Penh gathering is the second meeting of the
association, which was launched in Dhaka in September 1999, and
will be opened by Cambodia's King Norodom Sihanouk.

Delegates from 25 countries have so far arrived in the
Cambodian capital which has been decked out with peace slogans
and flags.

Officials said the Philippines was amongst a handful of
countries who had pulled out of the meet due to instability at
home.

The agenda for the AAPP which ends Friday includes workshops,
some of which have already begun, on the culture of peace, the
role of women and youth in strengthening peace, rights and
development, good governance and strengthening the practice of
human rights.