Vietnam to join ASEAN in July

Vietnam to join ASEAN in July

HONG KONG (AFP): Vietnam will be officially admitted into the
Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) on July 22, 1995,
a Hong Kong-based weekly magazine said yesterday.

The induction will take place at the next meeting of ASEAN
foreign ministers in Brunei, the Far Eastern Economic Review said
in its latest edition.

The magazine said the decision to admit the group's first
communist member was made during a meeting in September of
ASEAN's standing committee.

The decision, which has not yet been formally announced, will
make Vietnam the seventh member of ASEAN, which was formed in
1967 as a bulwark against the spread of socialism in Southeast
Asia.

Present ASEAN members include Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the
Philippines, Thailand and Singapore.