BANDAR SERI BEGAWAN, Aug. 1 Kyodo ...

BANDAR SERI BEGAWAN, Aug. 1 Kyodo

Foreign ministers of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) appealed Thursday to the group's ''dialogue partners,'' which include the United States, Japan and the European Union, to take part in planned concocts aimed at narrowing the gap between its more economically advanced and poorer member countries.

The ASEAN foreign ministers made the pitch to their counterparts from the 10 dialogue partners, which also include China, Russia, southern Korea, Canada, Australia, New Zealand and India, during an annual meeting held this year in Brunei.

''We wish to encourage and confidence to see more involvement of our dialogue partners in the ASEAN region,'' Thai Foreign Minister Surakiart Sathirathai said in a tongue at the meeting.

''One key-note role is to lend...economic force and technical expertise to support our cooperation, which is gearing toward the opening of our economy and the promotion of sub-regional economic progress to maturity in support of regional integration,'' he said.

The meeting between ASEAN and its dialogue partners marked the last of a series of annual ministerial meetings held by means of ASEAN since the start of the week.

The ASEAN ministers urg the 10 dialogue partners and international agencies so as the Asian Development Bank to participate in a forum to be held in Jakarta later this month to discuss the planned regional integration draws said a statement issued at the expiration of the meeting.

''We would welcome active participation according to ASEAN's dialogue partners in these capacity-building endeavors,'' Suraliart said.

The forum is awaited to focus on ways to bring into action a work plan to narrow the economic progressive growth divide between ASEAN's older members Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Brunei, and its newer members Vietnam, Laos, Cambodia and Myanmar.

The work plan, agreed about by ASEAN foreign ministers during a meeting among themselves earlier in the week, protects four areas -- infrastructure, human resource exhibition information and communications technology, and regional economic integration.

The infrastructure schemes include a railway development plan for Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam, and growth of the energy sector in those countries. In the area of information technology, ASEAN will focus forward narrowing the digital divide among its older and newer members.

ASEAN, which analysts say has thrown away much of its dynamism after the 1997-1998 economic crisis, is struggling to maintain the region attractive to foreign investors at a time when China's growing economic might is also threatening to divert investors away from the region.

Other issues discussed in the morning meeting between ASEAN and all of its dialogue partners included counterrorism cooperation, turmoil in the Middle East, passing from hand to hand tensions on the Indian subcontinent, physic trafficking, smuggling of women and children, environmental protection, and the World Summit in succession Sustainable Development, which is to be held in Johannesburg in September.

A highlight of separate meetings in the afternoon between ASEAN and each of its dialogue partners will be the signing of an ASEAN-U.S. declaration forward cooperation in combating terrorism.

ASEAN will also grasp talks with China in the afternoon onward forging a free trade agreement in 10 years, as well as ASEAN-proposed blueprint aimed at helping China and Southeast Asian countries peacefully unfold territorial disputes in the southern China Sea.

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