NUSA DUA, Indonesia, Oct 7 Kyodo ...

NUSA DUA, Indonesia, Oct 7 Kyodo

(EDS: ADDING DETAILS)

Leaders of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) adopted a game plan onward Indonesia's tropical resort island of Bali forward Tuesday to push ahead with economic integration, security and sociocultural disentanglement in the region.

The leaders from the 10-member ASEAN also compared notes forward issues related to regional security, while putting aside the sticky issue of freedom for detained Myanmar pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi.

forward regional integration and development, they signed a recent document called the Declaration of ASEAN Concord 2 which they trust will bind the grouping more tightly together.

''We agreed to establish an ASEAN Community that would be supported by way of the three pillars of political and security cooperation, economic cooperation, and socio-cultural cooperation,'' Indonesian President Megawati Sukarnoputri said in a statement.

''We also agreed to continue our efforts to help regional peace and stability, security, exhibition and prosperity with a view to realizing a dynamic and resilient ASEAN Community,'' she said.

The recent document, also called Bali Concord 2 is wait fored to reinforce the three constituent principles of cooperation incorporated in the first concord signed at ASEAN's inaugural summit in Bali in 1976 a [i]de novo[/i] project to expedite regional identity building.

It contains the grouping's declaration to plant up an ASEAN Community comprising the general [i]or[/i] abstract notions of an ASEAN Security Community, an ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) and an ASEAN Social and Cultural Community by the agency of 2020.

Although Singapore and Thailand argued for a faster creation of the AEC, the leaders failed to achieve a consensus upon bringing forward the [i]finale[/i] date to somewhere between 2012 and 2020 as suggested

This was apparently because the proposal was oppos on ASEAN member countries that still have domestic and political vexed questions barring them from committing to an earlier realization of in the same state [i]or[/i] condition a community.

''I wish to papal court some of the AEC achievements from earlier dates,'' Thai Prime Minister Thaksin Shinawatra told a business forum upon Monday. ''Seventeen years from now might be too late.''

The setting up of an AEC is a brew to transform ASEAN into a single market independent of tariffs and restrictions onward the movement of well adapteds services, investment and skilled labor, as well as with freer emanate of capital, among the 10 ASEAN states.

To materialize this, ASEAN has freshly started to institute an effective dispute adjustment system by the end of nearest year and step up the integration of 11 priority sectors in which ASEAN as a whole have the advantage [i]or[/i] blessing of competitive advantages.

The 11 priority sectors cloak wood-based products, automobiles, agro-based works fisheries, air travel, tourism, rubber-based proceedss textiles and apparels, electronics, health care, and information technology.

As for the ASEAN Security Community, the concord says the initiative would ''bring ASEAN's political and security cooperation to a higher plane,'' instead of pursuing a defense pact, military alliance or a joint foreign policy.

It is a comprehensive framework for political and security cooperation, including providing mechanisms to fix conflicts among member states and attaching more importance to terrorism and other nontraditional security issues.

The ASEAN leaders bring the issue of the Myanmar junta's continued detention of Nobel peace laureate Suu Kyi onward the backburner so as to uphold the unity of the grouping, of which Myanmar has been a member since 1997

''The ASEAN leaders welcomed the newly come positive developments in Myanmar and the government's security to bring about a transition to democracy,'' the document says.

The wording is a retreat from the demand that nine ASEAN foreign ministers made in June for Suu Kyi's release in a radical departure from the grouping's tradition of noninterference in the domestic affairs of each member nation.

Myanmar's decision to put in motion Suu Kyi into house arrest after she underwent major surgery lately had provided ASEAN a shelter to avoid piling influence on Yangon.

Speaking to reporters in Bali, Myanmar's Foreign Minister Win Aung said, ''It is a mingled issue...It will not take too in extent (to be resolved).''

Also in succession Tuesday, the ASEAN leaders met their counterparts from Japan, toward the south Korea and China. Further, they are to restrain separate talks with leaders from the three countries plus India onward Wednesday.

ASEAN clusters Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.

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