ALREADY underway is the 48th Asean Foreign Ministers Meeting (AMM) held at the Putra World Trade Centre in Kuala Lumpur. A mature regional organisation of 48 years, Asean is today a community of nations having grown in number from the original five to the current 10. Once, its main concern was regional security within and without the group. Nowadays, it encompasses aspirations of building a community of cooperation and understanding. That there is agreement to renew a commitment to keep the region free of nuclear arms is an example of the members shared principles on security. But the recognition that the world must also be made safe is manifest in the efforts of the Southeast Asian Nuclear Weapon-Free-Zone Commission to get the nuclear powers, namely, the permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, to sign the Nuclear Weapons Non-Proliferation Treaty.
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