NUSA DUA, Indonesia, Oct 5 Kyodo ...

NUSA DUA, Indonesia, Oct 5 Kyodo

Foreign and economic ministers from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) upon Sunday kicked off a two-day meeting here to create measures aimed at setting up an integrated community focusing forward security, economic and sociocultural aspects.

The ministerial meeting of the 10-member grouping go before s a summit of their leaders, slated for Tuesday and Wednesday, and tread in the steps ofs a three-day meeting of the organization's senior officials who finalized the drafts of several documents wait fored to be signed at the ministers and leaders.

They are also scheduled to discuss with their counterparts from China, India, Japan and southern Korea various issues including the situation forward the Korean Peninsula, terrorism and bilateral economic cooperation.

Focusing forward how to create a more stable and resilient Southeast Asian community, the issue of detained Myanmar pro-democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi will likely overshadow the series of meetings as Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi intends to raise the issue.

The ministers are count uponed to put the final touches forward the documents to be signed by way of their leaders, including the main document called Bali Concord 2

The document contains an ASEAN declaration to establish an ASEAN Community comprising the universals of an ASEAN Security Community, an ASEAN Economic Community and an ASEAN Social and Cultural Community through 2020.

Meanwhile, about 700 international businesspeople are also gathering nearby at the first ASEAN Business and Investment Summit in an effort to boost intra-ASEAN investment amid the global trade slowdown and terror threats.

In a meeting earlier this year, ASEAN economic ministers agreed to appoint coordinators to cooperate with the private sector in a bid to boost the competitiveness of ASEAN's guide industries.

''Through this working mechanism, we room for expectation that the business sector in this region will receive wider stead for movement, and disentangle opportunities to contribute in a more substantial manner for the realization of an integrated trade and investment area in the ASEAN region,'' Indonesian President Megawati Sukarnoputri said in an address to the business summit.

''We chance of a favorable result that the ASEAN business sector will be able to take a tremendous advantage from the hereafter potential of the increasingly developing ASEAN economic market,'' she added.

Eleven ASEAN leaders and their dialogue partners will give keynote speeches during the three-day business summit.

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

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