ASEAN Regional Forum Opens on Security Concerns

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Last updated at: (Beijing Time) Wednesday, July 31, 2002

ASEAN Regional Forum Opens on Security Concerns

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Asian ministers joined their Western counterparts on Wednesday for annual security talks focusing on both conventional security concerns and non-conventional ones like terrorism and transnational crime.

The one-day meeting of the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) brought together foreign ministers from the 10 countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) with those from theUnited States, Russia, China, Japan and a number of other countries.

Brunei's Foreign Minister Mohamed Bolkiah told reporters that the counter-terrorism fight would dominate the gathering.

In a statement already distributed before the meeting, the ARF called for freezing terrorist assets and information exchange in combating terrorism and transnational crime.

ASEAN officials said other topics would include heightened tensions on the divided Korean Peninsula and the war clouds gathering over the subcontinent.

The ministers are expected to call for resumption of dialogue between the two sides on the Korean Peninsula, whose navies had engaged in a deadly skirmish in the Yellow Sea in June.

Both Pyongyang and Seoul have recently made gestures on resuming dialogue to ease tensions caused by the clash, which killed four South Korean sailors. But the possibility of the foreign ministers from the two sides holding talks seemed remote.

As for South Asia, diplomats here said India has been unwillingto talk about its feud with Pakistan over the disputed Kashmir in the multilateral talks for fear of making it an international issue.

The ministers are also expected to tackle the future orientation of the ARF process, which critics say is a mere talking shop -- all words, no action.

In addition to the 10 ASEAN countries, the 23-member ARF, created in 1994, also groups Mongolia, the Democratic People's Republic of Korea, South Korea, Papua New Guinea, New Zealand, Australia, Canada, the European Union and India.

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