TOKYO, Dec 12: Japan and 10 Southeast Asian nations on Friday set themselves the ambitious goal of creating an East Asian community to enhance cooperation as Tokyo promised three billion dollars’ aid for the region.

The leaders of Japan and the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) agreed to work towards the regional grouping in the Tokyo Declaration, signed after a two-day summit here to mark three decades of relations between them.

The declaration said they sought to build an East Asian community that had “the shared spirit of mutual understanding and upholding Asian traditions and values, while respecting universal rules and principles.”

“Although our relationship is in a good state ... (global and other) environments require ASEAN and Japan to work together even more closely,” President Megawati Sukarnoputri of Indonesia, the current ASEAN chair, told reporters.

“We note a desire to consolidate our cooperation in the political and security fields,” she said at a post-summit media briefing with Japanese Prime Minister Junichiro Koizumi.

The 10-nation ASEAN would also work with its other dialogue partners — China and South Korea — to develop the East Asian community, Megawati said.

Koizumi dismissed a perception that Japan hosted the summit with ASEAN to catch up with the growing regional influence of China.

China’s rapid growth should be seen not as a threat but as “an opportunity” for Japan and the region, he said.

“By signing the Tokyo Declaration, we were able to define the direction Japan and ASEAN should head to in a new era,” he said.

Koizumi, who on Thursday agreed to start free trade talks next year with Malaysia, Thailand and the Philippines, said “the time requires our country to strengthen economic ties with ASEAN.”

The trade talks, for which no deadlines have been set, are likely to be tough due to Japan’s highly protected farming, forestry and fisheries sectors as well as its reluctance to accept foreign workers.

Admitting agriculture would be a thorny issue, Koizumi said he wanted to make the negotiations succeed “by conceding what we should concede and reforming what we should reform.”

An action plan enlarging on the ideas in the Tokyo Declaration spelled out efforts to reinforce the Japan-ASEAN economic partnership, “including elements of a possible free trade area, as soon as possible by 2012, taking into account the economic levels and sensitive sectors in each country.”

It said the countries would make “maximum efforts” to start talks on the comprehensive economic partnership from early 2005.

Japan also promised in the declaration to “continue to give priority to ASEAN countries” in its official aid programmes.

Speaking to reporters later, Philippines President Gloria Arroyo qualified her support for the enlarged Asian grouping.

—AFP