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Southeast Asian leaders sign blueprint for economic community

AP - Bali

Leaders of 10 Southeast Asian nations ranging from fledgling democracies to an absolute monarchy have signed a landmark accord aimed at wrestling their disparate region into a European-style economic community by 2020.

The blueprint, dubbed the Bali Concord II, envisions a single market, eliminating tariff and non-tariff barriers within an economic grouping encompassing 500 million people and annual trade totaling US$ 720 billion.

“We have just witnessed a watershed in the history of ASEAN,” the Indonesian president Ms Megawati Sukarnoputri said.

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations wants to band together to counter the burgeoning economic might of India and China, Asian powerhouses that are siphoning off investment and trade seen as essential for Southeast Asia’s development.

Leaders who gathered for a two-day ASEAN summit on this resort island acknowledged that the diversity of governance which also includes communist autocracies and a military dictatorship will complicate efforts to emulate European integration. Talks leading up to the annual summit were soured by the Myanmar military government’s continued detention of democracy campaigner Aung San Suu Kyi. Speaking at a parallel business summit, Japanese prime minister Mr Junichiro Koizumi said the region should not shy away from discussing political issues. “A sound political environment is indispensable to ... expand trade and investment. The countries of this region should offer each other advice and assistance to resolve any difficulties that they face in the political realm,” Mr Koizumi said.

The summit statements promise to set up a network of free trade zones across Southeast Asia and set deadlines for lowering tariffs and travel restrictions. They aim to create by 2020 the ASEAN economic community, modeled on European integration of the 1960s and 1970s before the advent of the European Union.