Other State Department Archive Sites

The State Department web site below is a permanent electronic archive of information released online from January 1, 1997 to January 20, 2001. Please see www.state.gov for current material from the Department of State. Or visit http://2001-2009.state.gov for information from that period. Archive sites are not updated, so external links may no longer function. Contact us with any questions about finding information. NOTE: External links to other Internet sites should not be construed as an endorsement of the views contained therein.

U.S. Department of State Office of the Spokesman Press Statement

Press Statement by James B. Foley, Deputy Spokesman
February 25, 1999

ASEAN Regional Forum Meeting
Bangkok, March 3-5, 1999

Senior foreign affairs and defense officials, as well as military officers, representing members of the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) will meet in Bangkok from March 3-5.  Mr. Ralph L. Boyce, Jr., Deputy Assistant Secretary for East Asian and Pacific Affairs, and Mr. Saroj Chavanaviraj, Permanent Secretary of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs of Thailand, will co-chair this meeting of the ARF's Intersessional Support Group on Confidence Building Measures. This meeting is the second of a two-part series that began in Honolulu, November 4-6, 1998.

The Confidence Building Measures Group is the most active of the ARF's intersessional working groups and its meetings form the core of the ARF's overall work program. The results of its deliberations in Honolulu and Bangkok will form the basis of the agenda for the annual Ministerial meeting in July that Secretary Albright and Department of Defense officials attend.

The United States has played an active and supportive role in the ASEAN Regional Forum since its inception in 1994. The ARF, comprised of twenty-two members (21 countries plus the EU), is the only region-wide Asia-Pacific government-level security forum. Co-chairmanship of the ARF's intersessional groups rotates; the U.S. co-chaired with Singapore a meeting on Search and Rescue in March 1996 and worked with Thailand and New Zealand to conduct a Disaster Relief experts meeting in Bangkok in January 1999.

In Bangkok, the Group will continue a frank, open and substantive dialogue on security-related and political developments in the region, nonproliferation and arms control, and a range of confidence building activities, including in the area of maritime cooperation. For the first time, the Group will examine the overlap between confidence building and preventive diplomacy, the second stage of the ARF's evolution, with the goal of developing recommendations on ways and means of addressing preventive diplomacy for the consideration of the ARF Senior Officials in late May and the ARF Foreign Ministers in late July.

[end of document]