S'pore, Cambodia, Vietnam hail ASEAN achievement

S'pore, Cambodia, Vietnam hail ASEAN achievement

KUALA LUMPUR (Agencies): Singapore owes its economic
prosperity to the peace and stability that the Association of
Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) brought to the region,
Singapore's Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong said in an interview
released here yesterday.

But he also said ASEAN is sometimes slow to act because its
consensus policy requires moving at the pace of the slowest
member.

"If Southeast Asia had remained fractious and unstable, few
foreign investors would have come here," Goh said in written
replies to questions from the Malaysian news agency Bernama
marking the 30th anniversary of ASEAN.

"Our countries would have remained poor and underdeveloped.
Singapore would not be what it is today," Goh said in the
interview, a copy of which was also released by his office in
Singapore.

"Since ASEAN's inception, no member country has sought to use
force or the threat of force to settle any dispute with a fellow
member country," Goh said. "We have entrenched a habit of
consultation and cooperation, and evolved a culture of consensus
building.

ASEAN, founded on Aug. 8, 1967 now includes a population of
about 500 million with a combined Gross Domestic Product of
nearly US$1 trillion and is the third largest regional grouping
in the world after the European Union and the North American Free
Trade Area.

The founding members were Indonesia, Malaysia, the
Philippines, Singapore and Thailand. Since then, Brunei, Vietnam,
Laos and Myanmar have joined. Cambodia's entry, scheduled for
last month, was postponed indefinitely because of the political
turmoil there.

Cambodia's new First Prime Minister Ung Huot hailed ASEAN's
role yesterday in bringing peace and security to Southeast Asia,
vowing Phnom Penh would become a equal partner in the 30-year-old
group.

Speaking at an officially organized forum to mark ASEAN's
anniversary, Ung Huot said ASEAN's most crucial role had not been
in the field of economic progress.

He said that while the economic role of the group was
important, it was just "part of a bigger whole".

The whole, he said, was peace, security and prosperity, which
ASEAN had helped bring to Cambodia's Southeast Asian neighbors
and which officials said would come here too after Cambodia
becomes a member later this year.

In a related development, Vietnam's Prime Minister Vo Van Kiet
said Hanoi is proud to have contributed to the region's peace,
stability and development.

Kiet made the comments in a speech published by the official
Vietnam News Agency yesterday. Vietnam joined ASEAN in July 1995.

ASEAN was originally established as a collective of market-
oriented countries in the face of rising communism in other parts
of the region as the Vietnam War raged.

For Vietnam, being a member of the group has been a
challenging but worthy and significant experience, Kiet said.

"Vietnam's relations with nations inside the group have been
developed, making important contribution to the social and
economic development, while creating a foundation for historical
problems to be solved," the agency quoted Kiet as saying.