Asean Tourism Forum Focuses on Security

Regional tourism ministers focused on safety and security in the travel industry over the weekend at the Asean Tourism Forum in Phnom Penh.

The ministers agreed to work closely with law enforcement agencies to ensure safety at airports, seaports and all tourist sites, an Asean statement said.

“We discussed the issue of Iraq very seriously, what could happen and how it could affect tour­ism in our region,” Ministry of Tour­ism Undersecretary of State Sisowath Chinnariddh said.

Prime Minister Hun Sen said Friday that the meeting of Asean, Chinese, Japanese and South Korean tourism ministers showed the world that the “Asia Pacific” is an area of peace and a model of interregional cooperation.

“I would like to announce again that my top priority is to keep peace and social order,” Hun Sen said.

He added that the safety of tour­ists was as important as the safety of Cambodian citizens and vowed that the country would not become a victim of terrorism.

Minister of Tourism Veng Sereyvuth said the Oct 12 bombings in Bali, Indonesia, which killed almost 200 people, brought the issue of security to the heart of the Asean Tourism Forum.

Even though Southeast Asia is now widely seen by Western governments as a dangerous travel destination for its citizens, Thai­land and Vietnam—considered one of the safest tourism destinations in Asia today—still seem able to pull in tourists, the Asean statement said.

“We must protect our industry by reviewing the matter of inter­na­tional travel advisories and assessing how we can influence and manage the accuracy and effectiveness of these communications,” Veng Sereyvuth said.

The ministers agreed to produce an Asean Web site offering tourists “precise and timely information on tourism safety and se­cur­ity.” The site also will provide official information for public and private media organizations, as well as for foreign governments and will offer an alternative to travel information published by Wes­t­ern governments. The Web site will be hosted by Asean’s secretariat. Forum participants also decided to eliminate by 2005 the re­quirement for visas for Asean nationals traveling within the re­gion, Veng Sereyvuth said.

(Addi­tional reporting by The Associated Press and Agence France-Presse)

 

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