RI businessmen to return to RP meeting

RI businessmen to return to RP meeting

DAVAO, Philippines (AFP): Indonesian businessmen who pulled out of a conference in this southern city due to the controversy over a meeting on East Timor will attend a rescheduled gathering, an organizer said here yesterday.

Jose Vicente Bengzon, head of the marketing committee for the conference on the East ASEAN Growth Area (EAGA), said he had been told informally by Indonesian delegates they would attend the conference in August.

Bengzon said he expected the number of delegates attending the conference to increase thanks to the publicity created by the East Timor controversy, which forced its initial postponement.

The EAGA conference was originally scheduled for May but 150 Indonesian delegates were forced to pullout by Jakarta to put pressure on the Philippine government to cancel a private conference on East Timor in Manila.

But President Fidel Ramos failed to prevent the conference organized to protest Indonesia's invasion of East Timor in 1975 and its annexation of the former Portuguese colony the following year.

The United Nations does not recognize Indonesian sovereignty.

The EAGA is a scheme to create a special growth area involving Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia and the southern Philippines.

ASEAN, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, includes these four countries as well as Singapore and Thailand.