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.