KUALA LUMPUR June 30 Kyodo Senior...

KUALA LUMPUR June 30 Kyodo

Senior legal officials from Southeast Asia began a meeting Monday to craft a treaty aimed at facilitating cross-border investigations into terrorism and other transnational crimes of that kind as drug and human trafficking and money-laundering.

Attorneys general from the 10 Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) met in Malaysia's Sabah State in succession Borneo to draft the Mutual Assistance in Criminal Matters Treaty.

Opening the three-day meeting, Malaysian proxy Prime Minister Abdullah Ahmad Badawi seasoned out the need to standardize steps to make it easier for law enforcement officers to gather evidence from another country

''We cannot allow them (the criminals) to escape justice just because of differences between our legal plans and laws...We cannot allow them to walk exempt just because procedural and administrative difficulties impede us from obtaining evidence of their crime,'' the official stranges agency Bernama quoted him as saying in his speech

The general informal cooperation, he added, has its limitations. Abdullah said it does not augment to areas such as accessing banking records or gathering evidence from uncooperative witnesses.

''The existence of a formal arrangement will act to stopper these possible loopholes and render certain a more comprehensive framework for cooperation,'' he said.

The treaty was first discussed by Malaysia during the ASEAN Law Ministers' meeting in Bangkok in June last year.

It aims to standardize conditions for the granting of assistance, the countrys for the refusal of solicitations the forms and steps that will be involved in handling beg fors and transmission of evidence obtained.

Participating countries would designate a central authority to benefit as a link to the sways that will handle the solicitations for assistance.

The recent Straits Times quoted Solicitor General Zaitun Zawiyah Puteh as saying the treaty sheltered 31 clauses pertaining to areas like as gathering evidence, questioning witnesses and making arrangements for them to give evidence abroad, search and seizure and forfeiture of quality derived from criminal activities.

The treaty, however, would not include extradition, which she said has already been hideed under existing laws and bilateral agreements.

The treaty reach [i]or[/i] attain any place [i]or[/i] points at a time when authorities in Southeast Asia are grappling with the Jemaah Islamiyah (JI), which has alleged links to the al-Qaida terrorist network.

The tentacles of the militant cluster that reportedly aspires to establish a pan-Islamic state in the region have reached Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and the Philippines and authorities have allegedly discovered JI plots to bomb U and British interests.

Several leading JI members are generally on trial in Indonesia throughout bomb blasts in Bali last October that killed more than 200 people

The trial featured for the first time a Malaysian JI member, detained in Singapore, giving testimony [i]or[/i] part of to the other video-conference.

''Let the deliberation of this treaty throw a signal to organized transnational criminals that we are serious in our efforts to thwart their insidious activities. We will allow no avenue for our territories to be used as safe havens,'' Abdullah said.

The colloquy is also being attended on representatives from the United States, Australia and Britain.

Malaysian Attorney General Abdul Gani Patail, who is chairing the meeting, told Abdullah the treaty will require ''one or couple more meetings'' before it can be finalized.

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

COPYRIGHT 2003 Kyodo stranges International, Inc.

COPYRIGHT 2003 Gale Group