Aussie to help SE Asia

Aussie to help SE Asia

SYDNEY (AFP): Australia has launched a major effort to reassure Southeast Asian nations that it is ready to increase financial support for embattled currencies, whose decline now threatens exports from here.

Treasurer Peter Costello is on a visit to Malaysia, China and Hong Kong where he is reinforcing a message hammered home by Foreign Minister Alexander Downer in Perth on Monday -- that Canberra will consider aid to other Asia-Pacific nations if it is needed.

But Downer also expressed confidence in the long-term economic future of the Association of South East Asian Nations despite the crisis which forced the International Monetary Fund to prop up Thailand's economy with a US$16 billion rescue package.

Foreign affairs department officials stressed Tuesday that Australia's role in the currency rescue and its decision to lend $1 billion of the total to Thailand was in the national interest.