Indonesia To Host 33Rd Asean Inter-Parliamentary Assembly

Jakarta, Sept 11 (ANTARA) - Indonesia will host the 33rd Asean Inter-Parliamentary Assembly (AIPA) on September 16-22, House Speaker Marzuki Alie said here on Tuesday. Marzuki Alie would be the next chairman of AIPA for the period of 2012-2013 replacing the Cambodian parliament speaker. In a press conference at the House of Representative (DPR) building Marzuki said Indonesia has decided to hold the event in Lombok, West Nusa Tenggara. "For the first time the AIPA would carry a big theme of `strengthening parliamentary roles toward ASEAN Community in 2015` in the meeting this time," he said. He said AIPA is the right forum for discussing parliamentary roles including what parliamentary members in ASEAN could do with regard to various issues in the region. Marzuki said several issues have been set to be discussed in the committees for political, economic, social, organizational, women`s roles affairs and for dialogs with observers. In the field of politics he said discussion would be on efforts to increase public awareness towards ASEAN Community and South China Sea problems. "The recent ASEAN ministerial meeting in Cambodia has failed to make a joint communique because of the South China SEA issue," he said. With regard to economy Marzuki said discussions would be focused on efforts to reduce poverty, cooperation against money laundering and empowering small and medium businesses. On social affairs delegates would discuss increasing public awareness on efforts to overcome disasters and low carbon. "Issues like improving human resources and multilateral cooperation in the South China Sea issue would also be discussed in the dialogs with observers," he said. Several parliament observers that have pledged to attend the meeting are from Australia, Belarus, Canada, China, India, Japan, South Korea, Russia and the European Parliament.