Source - Business Day Website (Eng)
May 19, 2006


KUALA LUMPUR - The European Union is hoping to launch talks on a free trade agreement with Southeast Asia next year, EU Trade Commissioner Peter Mandelson said here Wednesday.

After issuing a "vision report" on prospects for a trade deal this week, the EU and the 10-member Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) will talk to governments of member states "for the remainder of this year," he said.

"I hope then that we will all receive the green light," Mandelson told reporters in Kuala Lumpur on the latest leg of a tour after meeting with regional trade ministers in Manila.
"I anticipate that we will but I don't take anything for granted, to start putting in place the modalities for our negotiations at the turn of the year for negotiations proper to get underway after that."

There have been concerns that the EU's criticism of Myanmar's military government, which has ignored calls by the EU to free democracy leader Aung San Suu Kyi, would pose an obstacle to any EU free trade accord with Asean.

The EU and US have slapped trade sanctions on Myanmar, which is an Asean member along with Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.

Mandelson sidetepped questions about whether Myanmar would be an impediment to the signing of the trade pact which would be the EU's first in Asia.

"We see Myanmar as an impediment to the political and economic development of this region as a whole, leaving aside the question of a free-trade agreement," he said.

"But I don't see why the rest of the Asean nations should be taken hostage, as it were,in what they want to do internationally because of the political conditions that operate in Myanmar."

Earlier he told dozens of EU and Malaysian business leaders at a trade luncheon that "Asean of fers a huge market of more than 530 million people whose living standards will rise in the coming years.

"Rapid development here also means scope for capital-intensive infrastructure projects in ... Asean and these projects offer major opportunities for European companies.

"And this is not a one way street," he said pointing outthat Europe is a huge and growing market for the region's textiles, shoes, fisheries and electronics export mordet. - AFP--End--

 

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