ASEAN Community Foundation to be Accelerated
Friday, 08 December, 2006 | 16:32 WIB

TEMPO Interactive, Manila: The Philippine President Gloria Macapagal-Arroyo was appealed to the members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) to support integration, liberalization and cooperation and also become one dynamic community in the region.

“Let all of us support the ASEAN members’ future mission,” said Arroyo. “Let us not see other countries as competitors, but as countries to complete each other.”

Arroyo spoke again about ASEAN's commitment, from the meeting in Bali in 2003, to transform the organization into a dynamic power in the region by 2020 by reaching stability based on three pillars—security, the economy and social-cultural society.

One of the agendas in the ASEAN Summit in Cebu, Philippine which will start on Sunday is the acceleration of changing the organization into an ASEAN Community from 2020 to 2015.

Indonesia's Foreign Affairs Minister, Hassan Wirajuda, said that the hastening is in order to anticipate the Free Trade Area (FTA), formed among East Asian countries—ASEAN members plus China, Japan, South Korea, Australia, India and New Zealand.

Thus, “ASEAN needs to consolidate itself, to strengthen its ties so that it can play an important role as the actuator of this integration process,” said Wirajuda in Bandung.

There are 24 document drafts to be discussed by ASEAN leaders. One of the important documents is the convention about terrorism, a Pathway to a Joint Community and the ASEAN Charter Blueprint.

According to Wirajuda, the new ASEAN Charter will be in an ASEAN Constitution and will be legalized in next ASEAN meeting in Singapore in 2007. He is certain that human rights protection that many countries urge can be included in the ASEAN Charter.

PNA, AFP, BERNAMA, AHMAD FIKRI AND KURNIAWAN