PHNOM
PENH: Cambodia said on Tuesday it will
focus on financial stability and narrowing regional development gaps during its
chairmanship of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations in 2012.
Prime
Minister Hun Sen told an ASEAN summit in Phnom Penh that Cambodia's priorities
for its year at the helm also included promoting an infrastructure investment
fund and protecting migrant workers' rights.
But he
said his number one task was "strengthening the mechanisms for ensuring
financial stability in the region as well as for preventing future crises"
in the global economy.
This
would require the doubling in size of the Chiang Mai Initiative, a multilateral
currency swap system likened to an Asian Monetary Fund, from $120 billion to
$240 billion.
ASEAN
should also push ahead with its plans to create a single market of almost 600
million people by 2015, and establish an infrastructure fund to improve
infrastructure links.
Hun Sen
said this was vital for "narrowing the development gap" between the
association's 10 member states, which range from deeply impoverished Myanmar to
advanced city state Singapore and emerging powerhouse Indonesia.
Countries
such as the Philippines and Indonesia are sources of huge labour flows in the
form of construction workers, maids and nannies for wealthier ASEAN members
like Malaysia and Singapore, as well as the Middle East.
Hun Sen
said the block had spoken in the past of creating a regional mechanism to
protect such workers' rights but too little progress had been made.
"We
should include this issue as a priority in our agenda and agree on some
concrete measures in 2012 for implementation," he told the assembled
leaders at the summit's opening ceremony in Phnom Penh.
Boosting
cooperation on disaster management in a region frequently lashed by floods,
tsunamis and earthquakes is another priority of Cambodia's tenure, he said.
Food
security also needed to be enhanced through greater cooperation on improving
productivity and investment in agriculture.
ASEAN
has often been dismissed as a talking shop but it has grown in strategic
importance in line with the region's economic strength and, in the eyes of the
United States, as a potential bulwark against China.
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