Asia must act as one to ride out global crisis

East Asia needs to work more closely together as the region tries to cope with the global financial crisis, journalists from Southeast Asian countries told a recent symposium in Tokyo.

An agreement reached in late October among the 10 members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations, and Japan, China and South Korea to create an $80 billion emergency fund marked an important first step in that direction, they said.

The five veteran journalists from newspapers in Thailand, Singapore, Malaysia, Indonesia and Vietnam took part in the Oct. 30 symposium organized by the Keizai Koho Center to explore ways for cooperation between Japan and ASEAN to deal with global financial instability. They were joined by Yasuhiro Goto, editor of the Asia and Oceania news department of the Nikkei business daily, who served as moderator of the discussions.