CAMBRIDGE, England -- There are so many summit meetings nowadays that it is difficult to keep up. Only a week after the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum summit finished in Mexico, East Asian governments met at the Association of Southeast Asian Nations plus 3 summit in Phnom Penh. ASEAN plus 3 is now probably more important for East Asian countries than APEC, which has become an organization dominated by U.S. interests.
ASEAN plus 3 was born as a reaction by East Asian countries against what they saw as unwarranted U.S. interference in their affairs. In the early to mid-1990s, Malaysian Premier Mahathir Mohamad proposed the East Asian Economic Grouping, which was to be a free trade area, or FTA, involving the 10 ASEAN countries and China, Japan and South Korea.
The EAEG was intended to balance the development of the North American Free Trade Agreement and the continued development and prospective enlargement of the European Union. It ran into fierce opposition from the United States and the idea was nudged to the back burner.