Delay membership: ASEAN founder

Delay membership: ASEAN founder

BANGKOK (AP): One of the key founders of the Association of
Southeast Asian Nations has urged that the admission of three new
members -- Cambodia, Laos and Myanmar -- be delayed.

Thanat Khoman, Thailand's foreign minister from 1959-1971,
warned in a letter published in the newspaper The Nation
yesterday, that "Premature expansion will be deleterious to both
the candidates and ASEAN."

"It would seem opportune" to add new members on the 30th
anniversary of the regional cooperation group, especially as it
would bring in the remaining countries in the area, he wrote.

He said, however, that it was "a well-known fact that some
candidates still have some weighty domestic problems to resolve
or, by their own admission, are neither financially nor
administratively capable of properly discharging their membership
obligations."