February 10, 2009
BANGKOK (AFP) - Prime Minister Abhisit Vejjajiva pledged Tuesday that a summit of Southeast Asian nations this month would mark a "new chapter" for the region, despite a run-up plagued by delays and protests.
The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) summit was initially due to take place in December, but had to be postponed to February 27-March 1 after demonstrators took over Bangkok's two airports for more than a week.
Thai authorities plan to deploy more than 3,000 police to guard against possible protests at the summit in the coastal town of Hua Hin, while there have been doubts about the attendance of some foreign leaders.
At a lavish ceremony in Bangkok featuring drummers and dancers wearing national dress, Abhisit said the summit would "mark a new chapter for ASEAN" after the signing of a charter last December."
The charter sets benchmarks for democracy and rules for membership of ASEAN. It was initially meant to be signed in Thailand but was inked in Jakarta instead because of the Bangkok airport protests.
Abhisit said ASEAN leaders would discuss a host of regional issues as well as "ways and means to mitigate the effects of the financial and economic crisis on the ASEAN community."
He added the meeting was also a "good opportunity for ASEAN to show to the rest of the world that ASEAN is still very much relevant".
The regional body's effectiveness was thrown into question by the chaotic attempts to rearrange the summit following the airport protests.
Cambodian premier Hun Sen said last month that he might not attend the summit, although the government later said he would after all.
Meetings between ASEAN and key regional partners China, Japan, South Korea, India, Australia and New Zealand -- which were meant to occur simultaneously with the summit -- have meanwhile been pushed back to April.
Thailand has been beset by protests since May last year, when a royalist group took to the streets to protest the ruling party's links with ousted premier Thaksin Shinawatra. The group seized the airports in late November.
Those protests ended when a court dissolved the Thaksin-linked ruling party, but the subsequent parliamentary election on December 15 of Abhisit's Democrat Party angered Thaksin's supporters.
