PhnomPenhPost-Oct 13, 2022
East Timor President Jose Ramos-Horta is set to visit Cambodia next week, while Cambodia is set to host the ASEAN summit and related meetings next month. Ramos-Horta has said that he hopes that East Timor will become the 11th member of ASEAN in 2023. “In the third week of October I will visit Cambodia at the invitation of His Majesty the King. Our friend Prime Minister Hun Sen, who holds the rotating chairmanship of ASEAN, is among our most ardent advocates for ASEAN membership,” Ramos-Horta said at the 77th UN General Assembly. He added that with support from all of ASEAN’s member countries and its highly competent secretariat as well as the UN, EU and ADB, his nation has made significant progress in their preparations for ASEAN accession. He also said that senior experts from ASEAN have conducted thorough reviews of East Timor’s ASEAN accession preparedness and have been working with East Timor to make progress on the three pillars of the bloc: Political-security, social-cultural and economic. He also said that he hopes that in 2023 East Timor will gain WTO accession which he called a natural extension of his country’s regional and global economic integration. “ASEAN membership is a strategic imperative that is as important for East Timor’s stability and prosperity as much as peace and prosperity in East Timor should matter to ASEAN. As much as peace and prosperity in our neighborhood benefits all, conflicts or threats thereof and risks originating in one country inevitably impact all of the others,” said Ramos-Horta. Addressing the opening of the ASEAN Foreign Ministers’ Meeting in Phnom Penh in early August, Prime Minister Hun Sen expressed optimism that East Timor would be able to join ASEAN soon. Read more at: https://www.phnompenhpost.com/national-politics/east-timor-president-plans-visit-kingdom
