Indonesia to host regional security forum

Indonesia will host a regional security forum involving member states of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), its neighbors and dialogue partners scheduled for Wednesday on Batam island.

Lutfi Rauf, the Foreign Affairs Ministry's information and media affairs director, said Tuesday the meeting was likely to discuss nuclear crises in the Korean Peninsula and Iran, the latest developments in Palestine and human trafficking.

The three-day meeting of the "ASEAN Regional Forum - International Support Group Meeting on Confidence Building Measures and Preventive Diplomacy" (ARF ISG on CBMs and PD) will be attended by 120 senior officials, he was quoted by the national Antara enws agency as saying.

Terrorism, organized transnational crime and disaster handling also will top the agenda, he said.

The ASEAN Regional Forum was commissioned in Bangkok on July 25, 1994.

ARF participants now include Australia, Bangladesh, Brunei Darussalam, Cambodia, Canada, China, Democratic People's Republic of Korea, the European Union, India, Indonesia, Japan, South Korea, Malaysia, Myanmar, Mongolia, New Zealand, Pakistan, Papua New Guinea, the Philippines, Russia, Singapore, Thailand, Timor-Leste, the United States and Vietnam.

Source: Xinhua