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."