ASEAN urged to join forces on terrorism

MALAYSIA: Southeast Asia must increase cooperation in the fight against global terrorism to secure the region's future, Malaysian Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi said Tuesday.

Abdullah, the current chairman of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), opened an annual meeting of the group's foreign ministers by saying that terrorist attacks jeopardised economic and social achievements.

"We must contribute to the fight against international terrorism," Abdullah said in an opening speech to delegates in Kuala Lumpur.

"The scourge of terrorism has also become a menace to the security of our region and the stability of our respective countries," he added.

"Peace and stability in Southeast Asia will determine whether ASEAN succeeds or fails as a regional organisation."

Southeast Asia has suffered a series of terrorist attacks, including devastating bombings in Muslim-majority Indonesia and insurgent violence in the Philippines and Thailand. It has also claimed some successes, arresting key militants from Al-Qaeda's Southeast Asian chapter, Jemaah Islamiyah (JI), which authorities blame for the October 2002 Bali bombings that killed 202 people.

"We must demonstrate our determination to cooperate and eliminate from our midst in Southeast Asia, the threat of terrorism in all its forms and manifestations," said Abdullah, whose government promotes a moderate version of Islam.

"While peace is an end in itself, we cannot bring economic and social benefits to the people unless peace exists," he said.

ASEAN groups Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam, with a combined population of around 500 million people.

Last month Japan and ASEAN launched their first talks on cooperating against terrorism as Tokyo seeks to boost its presence in Southeast Asia.

Earlier Badawi told foreign ministers from the group's 10 member states that the region had no choice but to forge tighter economic bonds and develop a regional community.

"We have to become a true community because we cannot change our geography," Badawi said.

ASEAN foreign ministers are expected later to say they may accelerate the group's target to form a single-market community, bringing the deadline forward by five years to 2015. There are concerns within ASEAN, echoed in Abdullah's opening remarks, that in the absence of another round of global trade liberalisation, Southeast Asia may fall behind big trading powers and blocs unless its hastens trade and economic integration.

Global free-trade talks, billed as a once-in-a-generation chance to boost growth and ease poverty, collapsed on Monday after years of haggling. This raised the likelihood of a world economy splintered by preferential trade deals, economists said.

"Some countries feel that 2020 is too far away," an ASEAN diplomat said. "Based on the progress we are making in all sorts of areas, we should be able to achieve the target earlier."

ASEAN has signed a free-trade pact, but critics say the arrangements are riddled with exceptions, subverted by non-tariff barriers or overtaken by separate free-trade deals between some member states and the United States and Australia.

Kuala Lumpur, Tuesday, AFP, Reuters.