Asean ministers plan talks as haze lingers

KUALA LUMPUR - South-East Asian ministers will meet soon to discuss ways to help Indonesia extinguish forest and brush fires causing a thick smog blanketing the region, officials said yesterday.

Malaysia got a slight breather from the haze on Tuesday as air pollution levels fell, with environmental officials saying pollution was at unhealthy levels in just two areas after a sharp rise at the weekend.

Environment ministers from the 10-member Association of South-East Asian Nations could gather in Singapore as early as this week to try to help Indonesia put out the fires and prevent them recurring in future, a Malaysian government official said.

Forest fires are burning mainly in Indonesia's part of Borneo island and on Sumatra island, also in Indonesia. Most are deliberately lit. Each dry season, forest is illegally torched to clear land for agriculture, blanketing Southeast Asia in smog.

Malaysia fears the haze could hit tourism and businesses if Indonesia does not stamp out the fires soon.

Malaysia's largest opposition party, the mainly Chinese Democratic Action Party, handed a protest note to officials of the Indonesian embassy on Kuala Lumpur on Tuesday, urging Jakarta to stop the burning.

Galvanised by the 1997-98 fires, Southeast Asian countries signed the Asean Agreement on Transboundary Haze Pollution in 2002, but Indonesia has yet to ratify the pact.

- REUTERS