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.