Southeast Asian leaders on Sunday symbolically declared the establishment by year-end of an EU-style regional economic bloc, but diplomats admitted it will be years before the vision of a single market can be realised.
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Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak said “substantial progress” have been made in the negotiations, but more time was needed to reach mutually beneficial deal.
“Geo-political shifts have created greater interest in this region, and with it grew interest in the East Asia Summit, given its regional leadership and unique composition”, he said.
Countries which participated at the summit were the members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean)-Philippines, Malaysia, Indonesia, Laos, Burma (Myanmar), Vietnam, Singapore, Cambodia, Thailand, and Brunei-with Australia, People’s Republic of China, Republic of India, Japan, Republic of Korea and New Zealand.
However, some diplomats have admitted the declaration has no practical effect, and was largely meant to avoid having ASEAN – regularly criticised for its lack of concrete achievements – miss its own deadline of 2015.
It is a step towards realizing the idea of a three-pillared community to deepen regional integration first proposed in 2003 comprising an ASEAN Political and Security Community; an ASEAN Economic Community; and an ASEAN Socio-Cultural Community. However, Chairman of ASEAN Business Advisory Council Mohamad Munir Abdul Majid said that the newly formed Community would have to work hard to get success. ASEAN citizens will be allowed to work in other countries in the region, but will be limited to jobs in eight sectors, including engineering, accountancy and tourism.
The perpetrators of the Paris attacks were not “masterminds” he said, but rather “a bunch of killers with good social media”.
Addressing the ASEAN-India Summit here, Modi called for enhancing cooperation with ASEAN to tackle the major global challenge of terrorism.
“This is typical of Asean adopting the lowest common denominator as the threshold for action”, he said.
“This region … is critical to security, prosperity and human dignity around the world”, he said, while also pledging continued trade, diplomatic, and security support for the region. The document, however, avoids any direct reference to the maritime disputes in the South China Sea.
Najib says he’s also very encouraged that all members of the East Asia Summit have been actively involved since previous year in strengthening the organization.
This is thought to be critical since the South China Sea has a huge amount of the Earth’s maritime freight traveling on it, so it is vital to the region’s security and economic growth.
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He said China put forward a proposal for properly handling South China Sea issues.
