Southeast Asia to expand ties with regional giants

Southeast Asia to expand ties with regional giants

MANILA (Reuters): Senior Southeast Asian officials began
preparatory meetings on Wednesday for a weekend summit of its
leaders which will bring the region closer to economic
powerhouses Japan, China and South Korea.

The leaders of the 10-member Association of South East Asian
Nations (ASEAN) hold a summit in Manila on Sunday and then meet
the heads of government of the three observer nations, with whom
they want to expand trade, technical and financial ties.

A joint statement on cooperation in East Asia will likely be
issued at the end of the summit, which will spell out the
relationship the nations want to forge, officials said.

Details of the plan were discussed at meetings of ASEAN
financial officials on Wednesday, and will be finalized by the
region's finance ministers on Thursday, they said.

Earlier, police fired water canons to disperse dozens of left-
wing activists who staged a protest at the summit venue against
the removal of trade barriers and the trend toward globalization
which they said was increasing unemployment.

"We just want to have an audience. We want to speak but they
would not let us in," said a spokeswoman for the New Nationalist
Alliance protest group before she was pushed away by police.

ASEAN, which includes Brunei, Cambodia, Laos, Indonesia,
Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and
Vietnam, is looking for ways to maintain the economic resurgence
of the past year and re-invent the high growth many of its
members enjoyed before being hit by the 1997/98 financial crisis.

Identified initiatives include a new thrust on information
technology industries, further eliminating trade barriers in the
region and perhaps extending the ASEAN free trade area to the
northern neighbors, the officials said.

The leaders will be briefed after their summit by executives
from several high technology firms including U.S. software firm
Oracle Corp and Telekom Malaysia.

"The leaders have decided they cannot march into the 21st
century without understanding the imperatives of information
technology and the Internet," Roberto Romulo, a Philippine
businessman spearheading the initiative, said in an interview.

Separately, in a departure from its capital-intensive aid to
the region of the previous two years, Japan will announce a
comprehensive program at the summit to give technological
training to the region, officials in Tokyo said.

"The economies of Southeast Asia have more or less recovered
from the financial crisis which hit the region two years ago.
What they need now is well-trained people so they can rebuild
their economies on their own," said one Japanese official.

ASEAN Secretary-General Rodolfo Severino has said this fits in
well with the region's new thrust toward maintaining future
competitiveness in cutting edge industries.

But while ASEAN appeared to be powering ahead on the economic
front, it faced some stumbling blocks in an initiative to
increase regional security.