SINGAPORE — While he is confident that the formation of the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) is on track, Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong said the quality of the integration depends on how hard countries work on resolving outstanding issues such as the territorial dispute in South China Sea.

“(It) is an issue which directly affects four of the ASEAN countries but indirectly affects the whole of ASEAN because it is a security issue in the middle of South-east Asia. ASEAN has a stand which is that we should be negotiating a Code of Conduct,” he said, speaking during an interview with ASEAN journalists yesterday (June 4). “We want to complete the Code of Conduct with China. We are in the process of doing this.”

He added: “(Singapore is) not in a position to judge the claims. But we are in a positon to say we are affected by how this dispute is resolved and if it is not resolved peacefully, we will have a problem and if it is not resolved in accordance with international law or the Convention on the Law of the Sea, we will have a problem.”

The 10-member regional bloc had pledged to establish the AEC by the end of this year. However, the slow pace of integration has led various quarters to cast doubt on the target.

But Mr Lee said: “I think we will have an ASEAN Community by the end of the year. What the quality is depends how hard we work. There are outstanding things to be done. The more we can do, the better community we will have.”

Mr Lee added that the formation of the AEC will be “a very big step” but it does not mark the end of regional cooperation. “Beyond that, we need to think what we want to do as a next step in our regional integration and cooperation. And we have got an ASEAN group, which is studying this,” he said.

Mr Lee was also asked for his views on the Rohingya criss by New Straits Times journalist Aina Nassruddin and Associated Press foreign correspondent Aye Aye Win. In response, he reiterated that the countries directly involved have to resolve the problems. “There are many problems in the world. ASEAN cannot solve all of them,” he said. “Even (for) serious problems we can work together, we can influence one another, we can encourage other countries but ASEAN is not one country and it’s not possible for ASEAN to say you do that and you put a stop to this.”

Nevertheless, it is a “complex problem” which affects quite a number of countries in the region. “So we need to discuss and see what we can do about it. It has to be dealt with upstream in the source countries... We can encourage, we can discuss but the countries have to tackle these problems and minimise or at least mitigate the hardships and work together,” Mr Lee said.

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