Your Excellency, Mr. Phan Van Khai,
Prime Minister of Socialist Republic of Vietnam,
Your Majesty, Your Royal Highnesses, Excellencies,
Distinguished Delegates

It gives me great pleasure to extend, on behalf of the Indonesian delegation, our warm congratulations to you, Mr. Prime Minister, on your election as Chairman of the Sixth ASEAN Summit. I am confident that under your able guidance, our Meeting will succeed in achieving the objectives we have set for ourselves.

I should also like to take this opportunity to extend my delegation's deep appreciation for the hospitality accorded to us for the excellent arrangements made for this Summit.

May I seize the opportunity to join my Colleagues in warmly welcoming the Kingdom of Cambodia to the ASEAN family as a member. With all ten countries of Southeast Asia within the ASEAN fold, the vision of our founding fathers of a united Southeast Asia at peace with itself and with the rest of the world has been fulfilled. Indeed ASEAN has achieved full strength at a time when it needs all the vigour that it can muster.

Mr. Chairman,

We meet in the midst of a crisis that is putting the resilience of our nations and that of our Association to a severe test. The impact of this crisis has been devastating, but its domain has been largely in the financial and economic sphere. It has not had any significant repercussion on either the stability or the security of the region. Unlike thirty-years ago when ASEAN was struggling just to survive and the region was in political turmoil, today Southeast Asia and the larger Asia Pacific region remain at peace.

Peace gave the ASEAN nations the chance to focus on economic endeavours that resulted in three decades of sustained economic growth, which in its pace and magnitude far outstripped the world average. I do believe, that peace will once more attend the economic recovery of ASEAN.

That is why it is important that all ASEAN member countries ratify the Treaty on the Southeast Asia Nuclear Weapon-Free Zone and that eventually the nuclear powers endorse the Treaty by acceding to its protocol. This Treaty is a force for peace.

For the same reason, we are heartened by the progress in the work of the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) which continues to build confidence, transparency and a spirit of trust and cooperation among the powers that exert influence on the security of the larger Asia-Pacific region.

Also of far-reaching significance is our recent signing of the Second Protocol to the Treaty of Amity and Cooperation (TAC) so that non-Southeast Asian countries, especially our Dialogue Partners, could accede to the Treaty and further intensify their cooperation with ASEAN. The sustained and spirited cooperation fostered by the TAC is, of course, conducive to peace and stability. It will also be crucial to our efforts at economic recovery.

Mr. Chairman,

It has been 19 months since a financial and economic crisis erupted in Southeast Asia and broke the spell of over two decades of phenomenal economic growth. The peoples of the ASEAN region have borne the brunt of that crisis as the exchange rates of ASEAN currencies went on a tailspin and capital in massive volumes flowed out of the region at enormous speed, acutely impairing the capacity of once dynamic economies to produce goods and services and to trade. Tens of millions of workers lost their jobs as industries slowed down and companies went bankrupt.

We in ASEAN, individually as well as concertedly, have responded to this crisis with vigour and determination. As individual nations we introduced reforms to strengthen our financial and economic institutions, our banking and corporate sectors. On a bilateral basis, members have come to one another's aid by making vitally needed commodities available and guaranteeing instruments of trade, like letters of credit. We also hope to see in the months ahead the launching of a system of intra-ASEAN trade payments using our own currencies as well as an increase in counter-trade.

Most important, we have decided to accelerate the implementation of the CEPT Scheme so that we could achieve the ASEAN Free Trade Area (AFTA) even earlier. We have, in addition, signed a Framework Agreement on the ASEAN Investment Area (AIA), which calls for application of national treatment for investments from ASEAN member countries in 2010 and for investments from countries outside the region in 2020.

We have also made exceptional progress in the implementation of the Framework Agreement on Services, with the completion of the first round of negotiations covering seven essential sectors, the signing of the Protocol to Implement the Second Package of Commitments and the agreement to launch the second round of negotiations.

With the successful implementation of these major initiatives at liberalization and facilitation, we can expect ASEAN in 2003 to be transformed into one vast integrated regional economy, which offers benefits of scale that should stimulate intra-ASEAN investments while attracting investors from all over the world.

At the moment, however, we shall have to rely on Short Term Measures to Improve the ASEAN Investment Climate in order to cope immediately with the problem of rapidly declining investments as a result of the crisis.

Mr. Chairman,

In the light of our endeavours to overcome this crisis and soften its impact, our Dialogue Partnerships have become even more important. We are pleased therefore that our Dialogue Partners on various occasions have expressed confidence in the strength and soundness of our economical and their readiness to support our endeavours at recovery. Our developed country partners in the Asia-Europe Meeting, for example, have shared our advocacy for an open, transparent and rules-based international financial regime.

The APEC Economic Leaders Meeting in Kuala Lumpur last month took collective action to help the crisis-affected members. It adopted the Kuala Lumpur Action Programme on Skills Development to enhance the human resources of developing country members so they can better cope with the crisis. It also welcomed the Australian initiative on Economic Governance Capacity Building which would strengthen governance in the public, corporate and financial sectors of member economies, thereby shielding them from a recurrence of this crisis.

Given this spirit of cooperation between ASEAN and its developed country partners, I believe it is now opportune for ASEAN to intensify its advocacy in international forums for a global solid that will manage the workings of globalization so that it will benefit nations and not just a few at the expense of all others

Mr. Chairman,

While the region remains in the grip of the crisis we must address its harsh social impact, particularly on vulnerable groups such as youth, especially school dropouts; the rural and urban poor, especially women and infants; the disabled and the elderly. For this purpose, officials have put together an Action Plan on Social Safety Nets to be implemented by a Task Force that will bring direly needed social services expeditiously and comprehensively to these vulnerable groups. I look forward to the integrated implementation of many functional cooperation projects as components of the Social Safety Nets.

At the height of the economic crisis earlier this year, we launched the ASEAN Foundation to serve as the vehicle through which private organizations and individuals participate in the efforts of ASEAN in the field of human development. I believe the Foundation is destined to be a major factor in the alleviation of the social impact of the economic crisis. As such it deserves the full support of our Governments as well as our Dialogue Partners.

Mr. Chairman,

Last year, through ASEAN Vision 2020, we defined, if not our destiny, at least our destination in a journey through two uncharted decades of a new century and a new millennium. In this Summit through our adoption of the Hanoi Plan of Action, we devise a road map that shows us how to get to that destination. It sets forth all the many concrete activities we need to carry out in order to realize the community of caring societies that we have envisioned.

Indeed, we are engaged in a task of a significance and a magnitude that is a worthy challenge to our creativity, resourcefulness and perseverance. But I am sure that the detractors of ASEAN do realize this. And I doubt that the friends and supporters of ASEAN fully aware that there is hardly an aspect of human life and human development that is not touched by our endeavours.

The story of the ASEAN Vision 2020 and the Hanoi Plan of Action must therefore be told to as wide an audience as possible-to our global political, economic and social environment. The life of ASEAN has been cooperation. To sustain that life of cooperation, we must communicate effectively with our partners as well as our critics. Above all, we must put across the story of ASEAN to our own Peoples - to inspire them, to make them aware of their shared heritage and common destiny and to get them to participate in this exhilarating venture of regional cooperation.

Hence, let us go forth and tell the story of ASEAN to the world with all the conviction and skill at our command.