Papua New Guinea To Appoint Special Envoy To ASEAN

By Nor Baizura Basri KUALA LUMPUR, Aug 5 (Bernama) -- Papua New Guinea, which is hoping to become a full member of ASEAN, will appoint a special envoy to deal with ASEAN matters, Ambassador Peter H. Ilau said. The appointment reflected the country's commitment to become part of the 10-member bloc and expedite the process, he said. Ilau is leading Papua New Guinea's delegation for the Senior officials' Meeting held in conjunction with the 48th ASEAN Foreign Ministers' Meeting at Putra World Trade Centre here. "The appointed ambassador will look further at multilateral issues in ASEAN as well as the prerequisites prior to becoming the association's full member. "This will serve us with better guidelines before we formally file the official application to ASEAN," he told Bernama in an interview here recently. Ilau, who is Papua New Guinea's ambassador to Indonesia, said most of the prerequisites were economic-related like capacity building in terms of trading, import export arrangement as well as people to people business. "We understand that member countries are looking forward to integration towards becoming an economic community by end 2015. That, we are mindful and are doing the necessary things to prepare ourselves. "These (prerequisites) are not easy but achievable and there is a lot of work in terms of people capacity and country's capabilities. The appointment of a full-time ambassador to the region will kickstart the process of our formal submission to become a full member of ASEAN, he said. Papua New Guinea, an observer since 1981, has expressed interest to become a full member back in 2010 and has been having dialogues within the grouping since then. Located in the Southwestern Pacific, the country with a population of over seven million people, is rich in natural resources such as oil and gas. -- BERNAMA