ASEAN environment ministers meet on haze, regional issues
Copyright 2000 Deutsche Presse-Agentur
October 6, 2000
Environment ministers from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) on Friday began a two-day meeting in Malaysia's Sabah state, during which they are expected to discuss haze prevention and other regional issues.
Indonesia is expected to renew its commitment to help tackle the forest fires which are blamed for causing the recurrent thick haze that has hit parts of Southeast Asia, with the worst incident occuring in 1997, officials said.
The ministers are meeting in Kota Kinabalu, the capital of Sabah on Borneo island.
Malaysia's environment minister Law Hieng Ding, who is chairing the meeting, said the ministers would look at ways on how to step up regional sustainable development and environment protection.
Indonesia's environment minister Sonny Keraf said he would ask neighbouring countries for understanding as crisis-hit Jakarta lacked proper fire-fighting equipment to handle forest fires.
In an interview with the Sun daily on Friday, he said Jakarta was aware of regional anger over the recurring haze and forest fires, which he added, were mostly man-made.
Jakarta blames workers of timber and plantation companies for triggering the fires by using slash-and-burn methods to clear land.
Indonesia has named 10 plantation firms, including two Malaysian and one Singaporean, for being behind the two haze flare-ups so far this year.
Much of Malaysia, Singapore, Brunei and Indonesia's Sumatra and Kalimantan regions were shrouded by thick smoke for almost five months in 1997, due to raging forest fires which were finally extinguished by the annual monsoon rains.
Since then, the ASEAN countries have met regularly to review ways to prevent forest fires, such as by implementing a regional haze programme.
However, officials in Malaysia and Singapore have frequently complained that Jakarta was too slow to react to the fires and to penalize the culprits.
ASEAN groups Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.