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ASEAN Open To Help From China, Japan, South Korea To Combat Haze: Official

A monorail train is silhouetted against a barely visible Petronas Twin Towers in downtown Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, 11 August 2005. Malaysia declared a state of emergency 11 August as the air pollution index soared to extremely hazardous levels on the west coast, which has been worst-hit by smoke from fires in neighbouring Indonesia. AFP Photo by Tengku Bahar.

Kuala Lumpur (AFP) Aug 18, 2005
ASEAN will welcome any help from China, Japan and South Korea to combat the haze crisis caused by Indonesian forest fires, an official said Thursday ahead of talks among the dialogue partners.

"Any offers will be considered to fight the haze," said Raman Letchumanan, head of the environment unit at the Jakarta-based Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) secretariat.

Raman said one possible measure was for Japan to conduct costly cloud seeding over Indonesia's Sumatra island, where the problem is most severe, and provide aircraft to fight the blazes from the air.

"The most valuable assistance Japan can provide is cloud seeding to induce rain and aircraft to fight the fires from the air," he told AFP on the sidelines of an ASEAN officials meeting on the environment in northern Penang island.

The senior officials, whose meeting was scheduled before the haze crisis enveloped Malaysia and Thailand this month, warned Wednesday that dry weather and monsoon winds meant the smog could worsen if the fires were not controlled.

They also pressed for tough action against those responsible for lighting the fires, which are used to clear land for cultivation.

Raman said the ASEAN officials would meet their counterparts from China, Japan and South Korea Friday to discuss environmental issues including climate change, biodiversity and the haze crisis.

Malaysia and Singapore have both called for a more coordinated response from ASEAN on the annual haze problem, which in 1997-98 cost the region some 9.0 billion dollars by disrupting air travel and other business activities.

Malaysia on Monday deployed 125 firefighters to battle hundreds of fires on Sumatra island which last week smothered Kuala Lumpur and surrounding districts as well as the west coast where pollution reached extremely hazardous levels.

And Singapore Tuesday said it would send a military plane equipped with cloud-seeding devices to Sumatra island by the end of the week.

Shifting winds brought relief to peninsular Malaysia over the weekend, but pushed the problem north to regions along the Malaysia-Thailand border and onto the Thai island of Phuket.

However, a forecasting officer with Malaysia's meteorological services department said the haze was likely to flare again early next week as the southwesterly monsoon winds returned.

"The haze may hit the west of peninsula Malaysia from Johor to Penang. This is because satellite pictures Tuesday showed that the hot spots in Sumatra have spread from the centre of the island to the south and north," he told AFP.

"But we do not expect the haze to be that bad because the winds blowing from Sumatra are not expected to be strong," he said.

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Rains Clear Skies Over Indonesia's Haze-Struck Sumatra
Jakarta (AFP) Aug 18, 2005
Rains have cleared skies over Indonesia's Sumatra where fires caused a choking haze which smothered the region, officials said Thursday as probes into companies accused of being responsible were launched.







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