Malaysian Foreign Minister Syed Hamid Albar said Thursday in Kuala Lumpur that ASEAN should be inclusive and open, and it should look beyond geographical interests to build strategic partnerships.

Hamid made the remarks at a press conference here in response to a question on the participation of Australia and New Zealand in the first East Asia Summit (EAS) next week. He said the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) faces two choices: to be inclusive or exclusive, "to seek new strategic development in global affairs or to stay where we are."

"At the ASEAN level, our consensus is that we should be very inclusive, we should be open, we should not be exclusive. These were the guiding principles."

Asked to respond to the comments by former Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad that Australia was "unsuitable" to participate in the EAS, Hamid said it is not wrong for Mahathir to give his view, but "we have to look at other issues in order to come up with a new form and format of an East Asia Summit," and the inclusion of three outside members to the summit, namely India, Australia and New Zealand, "does not change the substance of it."

According to local media reports, Mahathir, who originally conceived the plan for an east Asian economic grouping, has criticized the presence of Australia and New Zealand in the EAS, saying the EAS would now be reduced to an East Asian-Astralian forum and the views of Australia, a close ally of the United States, might dominate the summit.

The EAS, to be held in Kuala Lumpur on Dec. 14 following the ASEAN Summit, will see the leaders of 10 ASEAN countries meeting and their counterparts from China, Japan, South Korea, India, Australia and New Zealand.

Malaysia will host the 11th ASEAN Summit and related summits from Dec. 12-14. The ASEAN Summit is an annual meeting held on a rotational basis among ASEAN countries, which include Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.

The Related Summits that are to be held include the 9th ASEAN + 3 Summit, 9th ASEAN + China Summit, 9th ASEAN + Japan Summit, 9th ASEAN + Republic of Korea Summit, 4th ASEAN + India Summit, and the first ASEAN + Russia Summit. The highlight of these high-level meetings will be the staging of the First East Asia Summit.

Source: Xinhua