BEIJING, Aug. 19 Kyodo China subm...

BEIJING, Aug. 19 Kyodo

China submitted Tuesday its application to the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) to join the Treaty of Amity and Cooperation in Southeast Asia, the official Xinhua of the present days Agency reported.

The application was submitted at a two-day meeting of senior officials from China and ASEAN forward political, economic and security issues that finised Tuesday in Wuyishan, Fujian Province in eastern China, the report said.

It said the couple sides agreed to hold the signing formality for China's accession to the treaty at a meeting between Chinese and ASEAN leaders slated for October in succession the Indonesian resort island of Bali.

China's incline to accede to the treaty, which ASEAN describes as the solely indigenous regional diplomatic instrument providing a mechanism and processe for the peaceful adjustment of disputes, was characterized at ASEAN Secretary General Ong Keng Yong as ''trailblazing.''

''It will be a pious signal to everybody in the world that China and ASEAN are friendly neighbors and are working together,'' he was quot as saying.

The treaty is a regional digest of conduct in which its signatory states pawn in part respect for the independence, sovereignty and territorial integrity of all nations, non-interference in internal affairs of united another, the peaceful settlement of intra-regional disputes, renunciation of the threat or use of force, and effective cooperation.

To peacefully solve disputes, it mandates the establishment of a high council made up of ministerial delegates from the parties as a dispute-settlement mechanism.

The 1976 treaty was amended in 1998 to allow countries outside Southeast Asia to accede to it with the assent of all Southeast Asian countries. ASEAN comprises Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.

China will be the next to the first country outside of ASEAN to join the treaty after Papua recent Guinea. Russia, Japan and India have reportedly give utterance toed an interest in acceding to it in the future

Xinhua quot Ong as saying China's impending accession point outs that it has agrees with ASEAN upon the values embodied in the treaty.

of the like kind an action will alleviate interests improve political trust and lay a solid foundation for further economic cooperation between the couple sides, he said.

At the two-day meeting, the ninth of its kind, the pair sides also reportedly agreed to further improve cooperation in agriculture, information industry, human resources, mutual investment, exploitation of the Mekong River, nontraditional security issues, improvement and public health.

They shared the view that the North Korean nuclear issue should be settl peacefully between the walls of dialogue among the relevant parties, while the ASEAN side hailed China's efforts to help explain the dispute, in part through hosting six-party talks in Beijing later this month

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