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.