Modi stresses on security cooperation at East Asia Summit

Speaking at the ASEAN Business and Investment Summit 2015, the Prime Minister promised ASEAN investors full cooperation in terms of facilitating their business operations in the republic and protecting innovators’ intellectual property (IP) rights.

He said the ASEAN Community, to which Australia is a party, has the potential to become the fourth largest economy in the world by 2030.

The regional bloc, established in 1967, groups Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.

“In practice, we have virtually eliminated tariff barriers between us”, Mr Najib said.

“Now we have to assure freer movements and removal of barriers that hinder growth and investment”, Razak added.

The move aims to increase cooperation and coordination on macroeconomic and financial policies in the region.

There are also other hurdles, such as corruption, uneven infrastructure and unequal costs of transportation and shipping. Much remains to be done and the region faces many challenges in finishing.

However, diplomats have admitted Sunday’s declaration has no practical effect, and was largely meant to avoid having ASEAN – regularly criticised for its lack of concrete achievements – miss its own deadline of 2015. It will be shortened to one and a half years.

“Those countries are in chaos – so many of them – because of this notion that somehow, if somebody worships God differently than you, that they’re less than you”, Obama said.

He said that in this regard, the Indian government had taken several initiatives towards transparency and online processing for investors in IP administration.

Obama commented Sunday at the close of a summit in Malaysia. Ahead of Obama’s visit, Human Rights Watch said Aquino’s government had detained hundreds of homeless people without charge to clean up the city for visiting leaders.

But Obama was careful not to lodge any strong public accusations against summit host Najib – although the US leader brought up the issues with him in private and met civil society activists on Saturday to hear their concerns. The night before, militants killed 19 people in an attack on a hotel in Mali on Friday before Malian commandos stormed the building and rescued 170 people, many of them foreigners.

Mr. Modi said the Indian Cultural Centre in Kuala Lumpur would be named after veteran freedom fighter and commander of the Indian National Army Netaji Subhas Chandra Bose.

At the summit, Southeast Asian leaders today formally created a unified economic community in a diverse region far larger than the European Union or North America, with hopes of competing with China and India.

China has been transforming reefs in the Spratly archipelago into artificial islands and has built airfields and other facilities on them.

Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia, Taiwan and Brunei also have territorial claims in the South China Sea.

“We support ASEAN-China’s ongoing efforts to fully and effectively implement the DOC in its entirety, and to work toward the expeditious conclusion of an effective Code of Conduct”, they added.

At the APEC summit in Manila, Obama held his first formal meeting with Canada’s young new prime minister Justin Trudeau, who basked in the kind of “rock star” treatment that the US president enjoyed at the beginning of his term.

Sources confirm Mr Turnbull has emphasised his own view, including directly during two separate meetings in recents days with China’s President Xi Jinping, and its Premier Li Keqiang, that China’s peaceful rise is only hampered by the South China Sea expansion which inevitably causes suspicion among its neighbours.