Your Royal Highnesses
Excellencies,
Distinguished Delegates,
Ladies and Gentlemen,

We have just witnessed a watershed event in the history of Southeast Asia. As decided by our ASEAN Leaders during their Sixth Summit in Hanoi in December 1998, the Kingdom of Cambodia has today formally joined ASEAN as a full member. I am therefore greatly pleased to express on behalf of the Government and people of Indonesia our heartfelt congratulations to the Government and people of Cambodia on this auspicious occasion. I should also like to extend a warm welcome to Minister Hor Nam Hong and his delegation. I look forward to working closely with them in the challenging task of regional development.

Cambodia is well prepared and fully deserves to assume membership in ASEAN. It has taken the necessary steps to acquire the attributes of ASEAN membership. Its representatives have been attending various ASEAN meetings and functions in their country's capacity as Observer. It has also submitted the documents of accession to the Treaty of Amity and Cooperation (TAC).

The Declaration signed today not only formalizes Cambodia's admission into ASEAN Membership but also attests to its solemn commitment to subscribe and accede to all key ASEAN agreements, treaties, and declarations, including the 1967 Bangkok Declaration, the 1971 ASEAN Declaration on ZOPFAN as well as the 1976 Declaration of ASEAN Concord that established the ASEAN principles of unity and solidarity working for regional peace, stability, security, and prosperity.

This development also augurs well for our endeavours to attain the purposes of our Association embodied in the Bangkok Declaration of 1967 and the objectives defined in ASEAN Vision 2020 that were recently translated into operational terms in the Hanoi Plan of Action and the Hanoi Declaration of 1998. With all ten Southeast Asian countries working together within the ASEAN fold, as envisioned by our founding fathers 32 years ago, we are now in the best position to take the necessary economic, social and political initiatives that will make ASEAN fully a concert of Southeast Asian nations, outward looking, living, in peace, stability and growing, prosperity, bonded together in dynamic development and in a community of caring societies.

The attainment of ASEAN-10 could not have been more timely: we are in the midst of a global financial and economic crisis that has stripped our developing economies of much of their dynamism. We are challenged on every side by the forces of globalization and unbridled liberalization. In a few months we will be stepping into a new century and a new millennium that are replete with pitfalls and uncertainties.

Yet these challenges are not without their attendant opportunities. As we strive to become a vast single market and investment area that offers tremendous economies of scale, we have the opportunity to conquer the basic problem of poverty and eventually achieve sustainable prosperity. At the same time we have the opportunity to lay the basis for stable regional peace in the decades to come.

To realize all these, we need to be united, we need to pool our resources and collaborate as do members of a close-knit family and as envisioned by our founding fathers. We need every contribution that can be delivered by every member to that collective effort and I look forward to Cambodia's active participation in all of the work of ASEAN.

All of us have waited so long for this historic moment. Now that it has come, we can celebrate it best by resolving to work even harder than we ever did before.