PHILIPPINES: Chinese premiere Wen Jiabao arrives in Cebu for a regional ASEAN summit

Chinese premiere Wen Jiabao arrived in the Philippines on Saturday (January 13) to join other leaders at a regional summit aimed at firming up trade, energy and counter-terrorism efforts in southeast Asia. Leaders from the 10 members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), plus the heads of state from Australia, New Zealand, Japan, South Korea, India and China will hold meetings from January 13 to 15 in the coastal city of Cebu to thrash out cooperation on economic and energy agreements. Wen met with Asia Development Bank President Haruhiko Kuroda after arriving in Cebu to discuss ways to further strengthen economic cooperation within southeast Asia. Earlier, ASEAN leaders laid the foundation for an economic and political bloc, signed a convention on counter-terrorism but failed to find common ground on Myanmar's woeful human rights record. The Association of South East Asian Nations speeded up its goal for regional economic integration by five years to 2015 and agreed to transform itself into a rules-based organisation with teeth at an annual summit in the central Philippines. In keeping with the summit's theme of, "One Caring and Sharing Community," leaders also agreed to improve the wages and treatment of migrant workers, redouble efforts to fight HIV/AIDS and better coordinate disaster prevention in a region that has seen a devastating tsunami, earthquakes, volcanic eruptions, floods, forest fires and pandemics over the last couple of years. ASEAN groups Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.

ITN Source | January 14, 2007

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