Asians, Latinos vow fight vs terror

Foreign ministers from 32 East Asian and Latin American countries adopted yesterday a plan of action to boost economic ties and shore up cooperation on security issues, including international terrorism.

The members of the Forum for East Asia-Latin America Cooperation (FEALAC) also called for a speedy resumption of the Doha round of trade talks, including "the abolition of all forms of agricultural support subsidies in accordance with the Doha mandate."

The Manila Plan of Action, completed at the end of three days of talks between foreign ministers and senior officials of FEALAC, cited the need for increased cooperation in the face of greater interdependence of nations and emerging transnational threats.

The statement cited such threats as "environmental degradation, natural disasters, extreme poverty and hunger, illicit drugs, infectious diseases, human trafficking, transnational crime and terrorism."

It did not identify specific sources of terrorism but the plan also called for projects to promote "inter-faith and inter-cultural understanding... so as to minimize religious prejudices, including as a result of the fight against terrorism."

This was an apparent reference to possible anti-Muslim sentiment in the wake of the Sept. 11, 2001 terror attacks and other incidents carried out by Islamic militants.

South Korean Foreign Minister Ban Ki-Moon said he had brought up the issue of North Korea’s nuclear program in the discussions and cited the need for "de-nuclearization" of the Korean peninsula and a peaceful solution to the impasse.

Some Latin American delegates thought the Korean problem was distant from them but the conference helped explain how "almost all the security-related issues have become global issues," Ban said.

Top officials told a press conference that the meeting had led to some frank discussions among the delegates, particularly during the closed-door retreat in Tagaytay City.

Countries were able to discuss the problems they shared, Colombian Foreign Minister Carolina Barco said, citing Thailand and Indonesia consulting Colombia on substituting drug-producing crops grown by farmers.

Two affected countries had also raised the issue of bird flu which has spread to 10 Asian countries and has killed 10 people in Vietnam and Thailand, officials said, without saying which countries had raised the issue or how FEALAC had responded.

FEALAC, which was conceived by Singapore and Chile in 1998 and held its first ministerial meeting in Santiago in 2001, had previously focused on economic and cultural cooperation, but this year’s meeting brought a new prominence to security issues.

Foreign Affairs Secretary Delia Albert, one of the co-chairmen of the meeting, said cooperation was continuing in areas such as the economy, academe, science and technology, and culture.

FEALAC working groups will carry out projects to help small and medium enterprises, link leading universities in each country through technology, and set up meetings between business groups of the two regions, the officials said.

The Latin American countries in the group are Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Costa Rica, Cuba, Chile, Ecuador, El Salvador, Mexico, Panama, Paraguay, Peru, Uruguay and Venezuela.

Guatemala and Nicaragua were accepted into the group during the meeting in Manila.

On the other side are Australia, Brunei, Cambodia, China, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, New Zealand, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam. — AFP, Aurea Calica