ASEAN declares common market, discusses terrorism, territorial disputes

The Association of Southeast Asian Nations on Sunday declared itself to be a common market at its summit in Malaysia, which ended with a call to confront terrorism and reduce tension in territorial disputes.

The leaders of Myanmar, Brunei, Cambodia, The Philippines, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam signed an agreement to constitute themselves as the ASEAN Community, an economic zone with 622 million inhabitants and a joint gross domestic product of $2.5 billion.

With the declaration, made during the summit held in Kuala Lumpur and which will become effective on Jan. 1, 2016, ASEAN intends to create a common market and a single production base with free circulation of capital, services, goods, investment and qualified personnel.

The regional bloc thus aspires to increase its joint GDP to $4.7 billion by 2020 and become the world’s fourthlargest economic bloc within 15 years.

“Southeast Asia has emerged as an epicenter for peaceful conflict resolution. This is due to ASEAN. Where there was war, there is peace; where there was poverty, there is prosperity; where there was division and fear, there is unity and stability,” said Malaysian Prime Minister Najib Razak at the ceremony.

The signing preceded the East Asia summit, which besides the ASEAN members includes China, Japan, South Korea, the United States and Russia, and at which differences on territorial disputes among several of the countries in the South China Sea emerged.

Beijing claims almost the entire South China Sea and has constructed installations for military use on several of the islands in the area rich in oil, natural gas and other marine resources although Vietnam and The Philippines, in particular, have territorial claims in the region as well.

At the conclusion of the meeting, Najib called for discussing the disputes “in a way that does not raise tension,” according to international law, and he urged the parties to accelerate the approval of a code of conduct for the disputed zone.

The ASEAN summit was also marked by the Paris and Bamako terrorist attacks and the 10 member nations issued a call to confront terrorism and extremist violence by groups such as the Islamic State.

Najib said that the fight against the IS cannot be limited to a military response and called for the extremist Muslim ideology that motivates its members to be combatted as well. EFE

jcp/bp