Leaders of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) have given the green light to a high-level task force to begin drafting the regional grouping's first-ever charter, which aimed at transforming it into a more rules-based than simply a consensus-based organization.

In the Chairperson's Statement of the 12th ASEAN Summit which was released here Sunday, the ASEAN leaders said that the task force, composed of representatives from each member state, must complete the final charter in time for the next regional summit in Singapore in November 2007.

"We signed the Cebu Declaration on the Blueprint of the ASEAN Charter to endorse the Report of the Eminent Persons Group (EPG) on the ASEAN Charter as one of the basis of the drafting of the ASEAN Charter together with our views and directives given at the 11th and 12th ASEAN Summit", said the statement.

The EPG is working for the charter that is rules-based comprising of three pillars: Economic Community, Social and Cultural Community and Security Economy.

"We are committed to establish an ASEAN Charter as a crowning achievement of 40 years of ASEAN to enable ASEAN to meet future challenges and opportunities," said the leaders of Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Myanmar, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam.

ASEAN also reiterated its resolve that an ASEAN Charter would serve as a "firm foundation" in achieving one ASEAN community "providing an enhanced institutional framework as well as conferring a legal personality to ASEAN."

They said an ASEAN Charter will give the regional economic grouping a legal personality and an efficient structure in dealing with the challenges facing ASEAN's integration process, rapid globalization and impact of new technologies.

Source: Xinhua