Thai PM to visit Cambodia for 20th ASEAN Summit

BANGKOK, March 29 (TNA) - Thai Prime Minister Yingluck Sinawatra will visit Cambodia early next month to attend the next leadership summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) and related forums, set to be held in the neighbouring nation's capital, Phnom Penh, from March 30-April 4. Yingluck is scheduled to attend the 20th ASEAN Summit from April 3-4, at which she will propose initiatives on regional disaster management, covering haze-related problems, as well as raise regional cooperation against narcotics and toward the ASEAN connectivity. Yingluck will also participate in the 6th Indonesia-Malaysia-Thailand Growth Triangle (IMT-GT) Meeting, at which agreed action plans on the three neighbours' joint development projects over the past five years will be reviewed and the next five-year action plan, from 2012-2016, will be discussed. Cambodia, meanwhile, will host the forthcoming ASEAN summit and releated forums for the first time, after its chairmanship of the 10-nation bloc was handed over by Indonesia last year. The Cambodian chair of the 20th ASEAN Summit will also mark the 45th anniversary of the establishment of the growing 10-member ASEAN. At the end of the upcoming ASEAN summit, the participating regional leaders are scheduled to endorse the Phnom Penh Declaration on ASEAN:One Community, One Destiny; the ASEAN Leaders' Declaration on a Drug Free ASEAN 2015 and a Concept Paper on the Global Movement of Moderates. The regional leaders will also endorse a "Chairman's Statement on the 45th anniversary of ASEAN:The Way Forward." (TNA)