East Timor President Jose Ramos-Horta is set to visit Cambodia next week, while Cambodia is set to host the ASEAN summit and related meetings next month. Ramos-Horta has said that he hopes that East Timor will become the 11th member of ASEAN in 2023.

“In the third week of October I will visit Cambodia at the invitation of His Majesty the King. Our friend Prime Minister Hun Sen, who holds the rotating chairmanship of ASEAN, is among our most ardent advocates for ASEAN membership,” Ramos-Horta said at the 77th UN General Assembly.

He added that with support from all of ASEAN’s member countries and its highly competent secretariat as well as the UN, EU and ADB, his nation has made significant progress in their preparations for ASEAN accession.

He also said that senior experts from ASEAN have conducted thorough reviews of East Timor’s ASEAN accession preparedness and have been working with East Timor to make progress on the three pillars of the bloc: Political-security, social-cultural and economic.

“Their reports support our own views and those of UN Agencies, the Breton-Woods institution – as well as the ADB and foreign missions based in Dili – that East Timor has made significant strides since independence and that we should be welcomed into ASEAN as its 11th member. We hope to become a full member in 2023,” he continued.

He also said that he hopes that in 2023 East Timor will gain WTO accession which he called a natural extension of his country’s regional and global economic integration.

He noted that both the ASEAN and WTO accessions are driven by East Timor’s own economic interests, such as its domestic economic reform process aimed at ensuring a healthy enabling environment for national investment and the diversification of the national economy.

“ASEAN membership is a strategic imperative that is as important for East Timor’s stability and prosperity as much as peace and prosperity in East Timor should matter to ASEAN. As much as peace and prosperity in our neighbourhood benefits all, conflicts or threats thereof and risks originating in one country inevitably impact all of the others,” said Ramos-Horta.

Addressing the opening of the ASEAN Foreign Ministers’ Meeting in Phnom Penh in early August, Prime Minister Hun Sen expressed optimism that East Timor would be able to join ASEAN soon.

Cambodia is set to host the 40th-41st ASEAN Summits and related meetings on November 8-13 in Phnom Penh and has sent out invitations to all ASEAN member states, except for Myanmar, which was asked to send a non-political representative due to its ongoing internal political crisis and the lack of progress and commitment it has shown with implementing the ASEAN five-point consensus.

Cambodia has also sent out invitations to the ASEAN secretariat and the 10 ASEAN dialogue partners as well as some regional and international organisations.

Hun Sen announced recently that Cambodia had also invited the president of the World Bank, the director-general of the IMF, the president of the ADB, the director-general of the WTO, the president of the European Council, the president of the the Shanghai Cooperation Organisation and the head of the World Economic Forum to the summits and meetings in Phnom Penh.