Grassroots groups want people at heart of ASEM

Grassroots groups want people at heart of ASEM

LONDON (Agencies): Grassroots groups want this week's Asia-
Europe summit to tackle Asia's financial crisis with new economic
solutions that put ordinary people at their heart.

Instead of the free-market reforms backed by the International
Monetary Fund and the United States, they want solutions that
attack Asia's underlying political and human rights problems
along with its growing poverty and unemployment.

A Singapore newspaper reported yesterday that Asian officials
succeeded in toning down Europe's confrontational view of the
Asian financial crisis in a statement drafted for this week's
Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM)in London.

"Sources say a draft chairman's statement has been hammered
out after the Asian side succeeded in toning down Europe's
initial confrontational stance, putting the blame squarely on
Asia for the financial crisis," The Business Times reported.

Leaders of 25 nations are gathering tomorrow for the second
bi-annual summit known as ASEM 2.

"The statement will try to balance the need for more European
involvement with more Asian commitment to International Monetary
Fund reforms," The Business Times reported. "It will also
reaffirm a commitment to open multilateral trade -- an important
move because the Asians fear Europe will react to the crisis by
closing up."

Singapore's Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong's office said the
leaders at the London meeting will consider endorsing a Trade
Facilitation Action Plan and an Investment Promotion Action Plan
to enhance trade and investment between Asia and Europe.

Separately, at a two-day Asia Europe People's Forum which
began Tuesday, voluntary organizations urged leaders of the 25
participating nations to broaden their agenda to include the
impact of the crisis on people.

"We are concerned that ASEM 2 will place too much emphasis on
trade liberalization and deregulation -- free market policies
which, we believe, have contributed to the current economic
crisis in Asia," said Hilary Coulby of the Catholic Institute for
International Relations which organized the forum.

Echoing this view in a keynote address, Britain's Minister for
International Development Clare Short said the free-market
economic model is collapsing and people have begun to search "for
a different kind of political order."

Faisal Basri, director of the Institute for Development
Economics and Finance in Jakarta, told a news conference that the
Indonesian government can't solve the crisis -- which may soon
put more than 100 million people below the official poverty line.

Irene Fernandez of Tenaganita, a women's workers organization
in Malaysia, urged ASEM leaders to address the plight of
thousands of migrants who helped build the economies of Malaysia,
Thailand and other Asian countries who were now being sent home
"without any compensation at all."