A.S.E.A.N. very important to N.Z. says Minister

Press, 12 July 1984, Page 2

A.S.E.A.N. very important to N.Z. says Minister

NZPA staff correspondent Jakarta The Association of SouthEast Asian Nations (A.S.E.A.N.) was very important to New Zealand, said the Minister of State and Defence, Mr Thomson, yesterday. New Zealand had always been a very firm supporter of A.S.E.A.N. and had political and trade interests in common, he said.

Mr Thomson told reporters that he was standing in for the Minister of Foreign Affairs, Mr Cooper, who had election commitments, to make sure New Zealand was represented at the A.S.E.A.N. post-Minister-ial dialogue countries talks.

Mr Thomson was in Jakarta in March this year meeting defence counterparts as part of an A.S.E.A.N.-Australian tour. “Like the A.S.E.A.N. countries, New Zealand has a concern to have peace and security in the region,” he said.

New Zealand had supported the A.S.E.A.N. countries — the Philippines, Thailand, Indonesia, Malaysia, Singapore, and the new member, Brunei — on the Vietnamese occupation of Kampuchea. “We have supported the A.S.E.A.N. approach on the need to restore Kampuchea to freedom and security and we recognise A.S.E.A.N.’s leadership in that respect,” Mr Thomson said.

The two-day A.S.E.A.N. Foreign Ministers meeting ended in Jakarta on Tuesday with a joint communique which reiterated its call for Vietnam to withdraw its estimated 170,000 troops from Kampuchea and pledged full support for the call of the resistance; leader, Prince Norodom Sihanouk, for national reconciliation amongst all warring factions .in Kampuchea.

Prince Sihanouk leads the United Nations-recognised coalition Government-in-ex-ile of Democratic Kampuchea, whose strongest faction is the Peking-supported Khmer Rouge ousted from Kampuchea by the Vietnamese in early 1979. Prince Sihanouk included the present Vietnamesebacked Kampuchean Government of Heng Samrin in

a recent call for national reconciliation.

Indonesia’s Foreign Minister, Dr Mochtar Kusumaatmadja, whose Government has mounted several new initiatives on Kampuchea, including a visit by its Chief of Armed Forces, General Benny Murdani, to Vietnam, earlier this week described A.S.E.A.N. support for the Prince’s call for national reconciliation as significant.

New Zealand and the other dialogue countries, Australia, Canada, Japan and the United States and the E.E.C. — represented by Ireland — were expected to endorse the A.S.E.A.N. stand after their own two days of talks with the A.S.E.A.N. group, jointly and bilaterally, which begin today. On economic issues, the Foreign Ministers’ communique expressed serious concern about the severe debt problems faced by many developing countries and called for urgent steps to remedy the problem. The Ministers also emphasised the value of an open international trading system and agreed the grouping should intensify its collective economic international diplomacy to counter protectionist trends harmful to an international economy. The communique did not directly refer to the A.S.E.A.N.-supported proposal to examine ways of increasing co-operation with other Pacific countries but expressed the need to evolve a more productive and intensified relationship between the group and its dialogue partners. When asked about the

concept of greater co-opera-tion between Pacific basin countries, Mr Thomson said he would certainly discuss the matter with the Ministers.

But he said the countries would have to identify the most effective way of developing that sort of co-opera-tion without producing difficulties with anybody. “That takes time,” he said. “We have got to find out what we have in common ... as a New Zealand community we need to know how other people feel about the development in the region.” In a press conference after the close of the A.S.E.A.N. Ministerial session, Indonesia’s Foreign Minister, Dr Mochtar, reiterated, as had the other Ministers earlier, that A.S.E.A.N. saw no need for any institutionalised Pacific basin community along similar lines to the E.E.C. The A.S.E.A.N. nations as developing countries were believed to be concerned about the possibility of being dominated economically by richer countries in the Pacific basin, such as the United States and the industrial dynamos, such as South Korea. Dr Mochtar said that A.S.E.A.N. favoured a twolayered approach of suggesting practical ways to co-operate ; and having an exchange on future trends in the Pacific. Mr Thomson said that New Zealand would be very interested in discussing with the A.S.E.A.N. Ministers and the dialogue partners how they saw Pacific co-opera-tion developing.