When people speak these days about the Greater Mekong Sub-region, they usually talk in terms of developing the area, building roads and bridges, laying railway lines, constructing dams and hydroelectric plants, stringing transmission lines, protecting the environment, promoting tourism, preserving community life. Very rarely is the security dimension of the developments in the sub-region brought up. People generally do not take it into account and often ignore it.

This was not the case until fairly recently. In the era of strife in mainland Southeast Asia that followed the end of the Second World War, the potential for the security and political stability, as well for the development, of the Mekong sub-region was prominent in the minds of international policy-makers, much more than it is today. Even while war ravaged the sub-region, starting as early as the 1950s, international efforts were being undertaken to develop the Mekong Basin as a basic way of paving the way for peace.

Now, we have to remind ourselves that the development of the Greater Mekong Sub-region has profound implications for the peace and security of the region no less than for its economic and social development. This is why I consider this seminar on those implications to be most timely. And we have His Royal Highness Prince Norodom Sirivudh, the Cambodian Institute for Cooperation and Peace, the Friedrich Ebert Stiftung, and all the participants in this conference to thank for it.

Like Europe, what is now called the Greater Mekong Sub-region was for centuries ravaged by the armies of warring kingdoms crisscrossing the area, seeking territory, domination and ascendancy. Some wars were fought over the possession of rare - and sacred - white elephants. Others were waged for the capture of manpower to work underdeveloped lands, something that sounds exceedingly strange in these days of illegal transboundary migrants in search of work.

The European conquest of the area and the drawing of agreed boundaries between the French and British empires brought a measure of peace. The Japanese invasion and defeat and the wars of national liberation that ensued brought forth nations proclaiming independence on the model of the modern nation-state. Vietnam, however, emerged divided, where the United States, pre-occupied with cold-war concerns, intervened with force to shore up the southern half, with China backing up the other half. Laos and Cambodia became extensions of the battleground. All the while, Thailand felt threatened by the war next door, while Myanmar closed itself to the world. A little more than three years after its re-unification, Vietnam intervened in Cambodia, causing Thailand, and with it the rest of ASEAN, to feel threatened once more.

The political settlement of the Cambodian problem in the early 1990s led to Vietnam's membership in ASEAN in 1995. This was followed two years later by that of Laos and Myanmar. Cambodia itself came afterwards, last April. All of Southeast Asia is at last united in ASEAN. Insular and peninsular Southeast Asia and all of mainland Southeast Asia - that is, the riparian states along the Mekong - are now joined together in one association. Southeast Asia is no longer divided between ASEAN and non-ASEAN, between mainland and maritime.

The achievement of ASEAN Ten is no mere symbolic triumph. It has enormous significance for the future of peace and stability in Southeast Asia. For the mechanisms and processes, the spirit and purposes that have kept the peace in maritime Southeast Asia and Thailand have expanded to embrace all of mainland Southeast Asia, all of the Mekong riparian states.

ASEAN was founded in 1967 under very inauspicious circumstances. Indonesia, having emerged from a monumental political upheaval, had just ended its confrontation with Malaysia and Singapore. Malaysia and Singapore had just parted amid great bitterness. The Philippines maintained a claim to Sabah. Other territorial disputes bedeviled relations between ASEAN members. Mutual suspicion pervaded the region. Widely different historical experiences further divided it.

ASEAN was set up precisely to overcome these unpromising and dangerous conditions. To the amazement of the world, including some in Southeast Asia itself, ASEAN has largely succeeded. A careful respect for one another's sovereignty and sensibilities has considerably diminished suspicions between the ASEAN states. The determined resort to dialogue and consultation has kept disputes from erupting into violence. Steadily expanding networks of personal and institutional relationships have engendered in the elites of ASEAN the necessary modicum of trust. The habit and practice of cooperation in an ever-expanding range of areas have brought about benefits that have strengthened the ASEAN countries' confidence in the merit of regional solidarity. The insistence on consensus has prevented the region from being rent apart by irreconcilable differences. The deepening integration of ASEAN's economies has greatly enlarged the stake of each member in ASEAN cohesion. Under these conditions, recourse to arms has become all but unthinkable.

The ASEAN way, the ASEAN process, ASEAN habits and the ASEAN spirit have now been extended to the rest of Southeast Asia, to all of the Mekong Basin. This historic development, I believe, greatly brightens the prospects of enduring peace in mainland Southeast Asia and of solidarity between mainland and maritime Southeast Asia in the same way that ASEAN helped to keep the peace and strengthen the stability of the area that it initially covered.

More broadly, for the four new ASEAN members - all of them Mekong riparian countries - participation in AFTA and other regional economic arrangements has provided them with a way station in the course of opening themselves to the global economy. Their industries get gradually exposed to competition from the products of their neighbors before being fully opened to global competition. In the case of Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam, being part of AFTA comes before membership in WTO, Myanmar having been a member of GATT. ASEAN negotiations on AFTA, services and the ASEAN Investment Area prime the new ASEAN members for similar negotiations on the global stage. The process of opening up to the region paves the way for opening up to the world. In the process, market policies and institutions and the capacity to manage them are developed and strengthened through economic integration with ASEAN.

To the extent that an open and pluralistic economy, if prudently managed, leads to greater political stability, to that extent participation in AFTA and other market-opening schemes should help each new ASEAN member to achieve the stability that contributes also to the security of its neighbors.

The AFTA process takes into account the general difference in levels of development between the old and the new members of ASEAN and the fact that the newer members entered the process later than the older members. Thus, the newer members can complete their AFTA commitments somewhat later than the rest, depending on their date of entry. This accommodation of divergent interests helps to smooth overall relations as well as the AFTA process itself.

At the same time, with the differences in resource endowments and thus in economic advantages between and among old and new ASEAN members, an integrated ASEAN provides a balanced production platform, as well as a huge market, for industrial and agricultural enterprises. The Mekong Basin countries can benefit greatly from this in terms of markets and investments.

Regional integration, of course, can have its risks. Although their currencies are basically insulated from the volatility of global currency markets, the economies of Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam have suffered from the contagion of the Asian financial crisis. Their regional export markets have shrunk, except for Vietnam, whose exports to ASEAN grew by an amazing 242 percent from 1997 to 1998. Cambodia's exports to ASEAN dropped by 44 percent from 1997 to 1998, Laos' by 59 percent, and Myanmar by 31 percent. Their imports from ASEAN came down by comparable percentages, while Vietnam's increased by 110 percent. There is anecdotal evidence that foreign direct investment in the new members, much of which is from Southeast Asia, has dwindled.

Nevertheless, this could be a blessing in disguise, as the new ASEAN members are induced to join the wave of reform and the accelerated integration that have ensued from the crisis. As ASEAN members, they take full part in the ASEAN surveillance process, which scrutinizes, among other things, measures that each country has taken to spur economic recovery, protect the poor, and strengthen public and corporate governance.

The new members are part of the acceleration of AFTA's implementation. They participated fully in the decision by ASEAN's leaders to undertake "bold measures" for drawing back investments into ASEAN, including opening up their manufacturing sector to investments from other ASEAN countries. If they adopt the right policies, they stand to gain from market integration, with their inherent advantages of inexpensive labor and extensive natural resources. Their integration into ASEAN is itself a spur for the adoption of policies of openness and reform, which, again, should lead to greater political stability.

To be sure, the process of integration has to be handled carefully, sensitively and with due regard for the interests of the new members and the welfare of their peoples. If that is done, the integration of their economies with those of the rest of ASEAN could lock them into ASEAN's network of economic and political relationships in a substantial way, a way that would have a salutary impact on peace among neighbors and the stability of the region.

ASEAN's enlargement is of historic significance in another way. With the membership of the mainland states of Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam, ASEAN now has land borders with countries outside Southeast Asia. Apart from a very short border between Myanmar and Bangladesh, these happen to be with the two largest countries on the continent, China and India.

This fact carries great potential for ASEAN to engage the two giants in constructive and balanced relationships. Economic ties could be strengthened through infrastructure and human linkages across the common borders. The impetus for trade and other human interaction could be enormous, with transportation, communications and other links. The potential for tourism is considerable. Already, China, in whose Yunnan province the Mekong has its headwaters, is involved in discussions with ASEAN on the development of the Mekong Basin. The most advanced of these discussions concern the proposed Singapore-Kunming railway.

China's involvement in the development of the Mekong Basin forms another link in ASEAN's engagement with that country, an engagement that has fundamental implications for peace and stability in the area. It is of more than symbolic significance that the fifth in the annual political consultations between ASEAN and China, the primary forum for discussing political and security questions, was held in Kunming, last April. This fact impressed upon the senior officials participating in the talks the potential of cooperation for the development and security of the entire sub-region.

At the same time, the Southeast Asian countries bordering China and India, as well as other ASEAN members, can deal more confidently and effectively with these large neighbors in the context of ASEAN-China and ASEAN-India relations than on their own.

ASEAN now has regular consultations, more and more frequently, with China, Japan and the Republic of Korea at many levels, including at the summit and at the level of finance ministers. This forum, particularly at the summit, has expressed keen interest in the development of the Greater Mekong Sub-region. As economic times get better, the considerable resources of China, Japan and Korea could be mobilized for this purpose. Just as importantly, these regular encounters between all of Southeast Asia and the major powers of Northeast Asia contribute to the stability and progress of the region. In the process, cooperative activities - for example, in the development of the Mekong Basin and in international finance - can help strengthen and stabilize the relations among the Northeast Asian powers.

Cooperation among the Mekong riparian states, including Thailand, in the context of the Mekong and within ASEAN as a whole, apart from its direct benefits, engenders that confidence and sense of a common stake so essential for regional stability and enduring peace. The extension of the ASEAN process and the ASEAN spirit to the rest of Southeast Asia, that is, to the rest of the Mekong Basin, can work for peace and stability in that area in the same way that it has worked for ASEAN in its earlier dimensions. Moreover, the opening up of the economies of Southeast Asia, including those of the Mekong riparian states -- internally, to one another and to the rest of the world -- should help secure the political stability of those countries.

The cooperation between ASEAN and the Northeast Asian countries in the development of the Mekong Basin can contribute to the stability of East Asia as a whole.

And the development of the Mekong Basin, as well as its integration into ASEAN, beneficial in itself for the lives of its peoples, can bring to those peoples the blessings of security and peace.