Fresh from their landmark accord to establish a European-style economic community, 10 Southeast Asian leaders forged deals yesterday with China, India and Japan to make partners out of regional competitors.
China and India joined ASEAN's founding security pact, while the region's biggest investor, Japan, signed a pledge to reduce tariffs and non-tariff barriers.
"It will be implemented. All countries will join hands," Indian Prime Minister Atal Bihari Vajpayee said after signing the security pact.
China and ASEAN also agreed to work faster toward a free-trade agreement that would create the world's most populous market, with 1.7 billion consumers.
"It's good for the region. It's good for the rest of the world," Chinese Foreign Minister Li Zhaoxing (
The deals were signed yesterday on the closing day of an ASEAN summit that also included South Korea. It was held on Indonesia's Bali so that organizers could show that the region would not be paralyzed by last year's bombings on the resort island.
China and India have been siphoning off an increasing share of foreign investment and trade in Asia in recent years, and many ASEAN members are concerned that their larger Asian neighbors will economically overpower Southeast Asia, where many of its 500 million people live in poverty.
The 10 Southeast Asian leaders on Tuesday launched an ambitious attempt to pull their diverse governments -- ranging from Brunei's absolute monarchy to Thailand's fledgling democracy -- into an economic community by 2020.
They stressed it would not be a political union and, as if to underscore this, declined to criticize Myanmar's military government over its detention of democracy campaigner Aung San Suu Kyi despite stern pre-summit calls by ASEAN members for her release.
Yesterday, China joined ASEAN's 1976 Treaty of Amity and Cooperation, the grouping's founding nonaggression pact to promote regional stability. It also signed a second agreement that calls for greater economic and political cooperation.
"It means we will now try and solve problems through dialogue and negotiations," Singapore Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong said.
Indonesian Foreign Minister Hasan Wirayuda said he hoped that South Korea, Japan and Russia would soon sign the treaty.
Beijing and ASEAN are already committed to establishing by 2010 a free-trade area that would combine their huge markets. Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao (
"China cannot develop without the support of the rest of East Asia, and the prosperity of East Asia also needs China," Wen said.
ASEAN-China trade amounted to US$55.4 billion in 2001, with trade growing by an average of 25.7 percent annually between 1993 and 2001, according to the latest ASEAN statistics.
Japan's Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi signed a wide-ranging trade deal with ASEAN. His country traditionally has been Southeast Asia's largest trading partner and investor, with two-way trade amounting to US$99.2 billion in 2001, or 14.4 percent of ASEAN's total trade.
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