Environment ministers from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations were meeting in Kuala Lumpur on Monday to sign the treaty and attend an international conference on fighting wild fires.

ASEAN's 10 member countries would be bound by the pact to strengthen their fire fighting forces and establish early warning systems to try to prevent cross-border pollution, officials whohelped negotiate the agreement said. However, it contains no penalties for countries which do not comply, they said.

"This will lead to a better future in combatting forest fires," said Klaus Toepfer, executive director of the U.N. Environment Program, which helped to develop the treaty.

It would be Asia's first international agreement on fighting air pollution, Malaysian officials said on condition of anonymity. The only comparable agreement exists in Europe.

Each year, outbreaks of forest fires on Sumatra and Kalimantan blanket parts of nearby Singapore and Malaysia in choking smoke.

The Indonesian government usually blames plantation owners and traditional farmers for illegally setting fires as a cheap way to clear land. Similar reasons are given for fires each yearin Malaysia.

In 1997, during a drought caused by the El Nino weather phenomenon, huge clouds of thick smog threatened the health of millions of people in much of Southeast Asia.

A diplomatic row followed the 1997 fires, and negotiations began for the transboundary haze agreement soon afterward.

Malaysian officials said that the agreement includes commitments to develop aerial and satellite monitoring to detect forest fires, new regulations to stop fire outbreaks and programs for joint training and sharing of firefighting resources.

ASEAN comprises Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.

 Source :  The Jakarta Post