The Association of South-East Asian Nations will hold talks with Australia and New Zealand, and finalise a free trade agreement with India, signalling the importance of regional pacts amid fading hopes for a global trading regime.
ASEAN economic ministers, meeting in Singapore this week, are expected to put the final touches on an ASEAN-India trade-in-goods pact, agreed by senior officials earlier this month.
Officials have said that the deal, which is worth billions of dollars, is expected to be signed during the ASEAN-India summit in December.
A diplomatic source said that ASEAN economic ministers would also hold talks with their counterparts from Australia and New Zealand in an effort to have a trade agreement ready for signing by December.
The Foreign Minister, Stephen Smith, said recently that the Government hoped to conclude the talks with ASEAN in Singapore, but the diplomatic source said this might not be possible because certain issues still had to be resolved.
But the source added the issues, one of them concerning the rights of New Zealand's indigenous people, were minor.
He was confident a deal would be reached in time for the ASEAN summit in Bangkok in December.
ASEAN has agreed to gradually tear down barriers to trade in goods and services with China and South Korea and has signed a wide-ranging economic partnership deal with Japan, which also covers investments.
Forging the trade links with Australia, New Zealand and India would complete the bloc's ties with all its key Asia-Pacific trading partners, and could be a catalyst for a region-wide free trade zone, officials said.
ASEAN has a combined population of about 550 million people. It is a diverse group that ranges from high-tech Singapore to poverty-stricken Burma, and the world's most populous Muslim nation, Indonesia.
ASEAN is already a free trade area, with 90 per cent of goods traded having tariffs between zero and 5 per cent.
This week, the ministers are expected to discuss the impact of high oil and food prices and the escalating global economic slowdown on their economies.
But officials said the overriding focus would be on efforts to achieve a single market and manufacturing base by 2015 to raise ASEAN's profile in the face of competition from China and India. Singapore Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said ASEAN must become a strong, integrated region ''to stay in the game''. AFP