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ASEAN's founding fathers - Narciso Ramos of the Philippines, Adam Malik of Indonesia, Thanat Khoman of Thailand, Tun Abdul Razak of Malaysia, S. Ralaratnam of Singapore - sign the ASEAN Declaration.
 

      ° 30 November 1996: The First Informal ASEAN Summit is held in Jakarta. The ASEAN leaders discuss a number of initiatives, including the establishment of the ASEAN Foundation and the building of a railway that will connect Singapore with Kunming in southern China.
      ° 23 July 1997: Laos and Myanmar are admitted as members of ASEAN.
      ° 15 December 1997: The Second Informal Summit is held in Kuala Lumpur. The ASEAN leaders adopt the ASEAN Vision 2020, defining what the ASEAN region will be after two decades of the new millennium.
      ° 30 April 1999: Cambodia is admitted into ASEAN. All ten Southeast Asian nations are now members of ASEAN.
      ° 30 November 1999: The Third Informal ASEAN Summit is held in Manila. The ASEAN leaders decide to speed up efforts to achieve AFTA, to initiate a Troika of ASEAN Foreign Ministers as a useful means of attending to urgent regional peace and security concerns, and to intensify cooperation with ASEAN's Northeast Asian neighbours: China, Japan and the Republic of Korea within the ASEAN+3 framework of East Asian cooperation.
      At the time of its founding, many predicted that ASEAN would not last long, because many factors were going against it, not least the simmering disputes between member countries. 		  But, in the event, ASEAN's consensus-building approach to problems enabled the association to move forward.
      Each member learned to recognise its stake in the viability of the association. Each recognised the wisdom of ASEAN's not being a supranational government that has authority over its individual members. Each member exercises full sovereignty. This is why ASEAN decisions are reached either unanimously or consensually.
      In a broad consensus, one or two members may not fully agree with a proposal but will not object to its being carried out.

Political and Security Cooperation
Although it was initially muted on ASEAN's agenda, political and security cooperation was an important goal of the member states from the beginning. Some of the most important accords adopted by ASEAN concern political and security issues,
Cambodia's admission on 30 April 1999 unified Southeast Asia under ASEAN
such as the 1971 declaration designating Southeast Asia as a Zone of Peace, Freedom and Neutrality (ZOPFAN), the Treaty of Amity and Cooperation in Southeast Asia and the Declaration of ASEAN Concord in 1976, and the Southeast Asia Nuclear Weapon-Free Zone Treaty of 1995. With the establishment of the ASEAN Regional Forum, ASEAN created a major consultation process and confidence-building mechanism for peace and stability in the Asia-Pacific region.


 
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