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.