The ASEAN Charter in force last Monday marked the start of a new era for the regional grouping, a local official said on Friday.

As a politically negotiated but legally binding document, the Charter would provide an element of certainty in the conduct of member states, said Ambassador-at-large Ahmad Fuzi Abdul Razak.

Although not necessarily perfect, the Charter could now serve as the "mother" of all ASEAN instruments and the primary source of reference that should prevail over other instruments, he was quoted as saying by Malaysia's national news services Bernama.

Ahmad Fuzi was the former secretary-general of the Malaysian Foreign Ministry. He was also one of the former members of the ASEAN High Level Task Force for drafting the Charter.

The Charter was comprehensive enough to provide a legal framework to facilitate the conduct of both internal and external relations involving ASEAN member countries, he said at the Asia- Europe Institute Ambassadors Lecture.

The Charter was not an action plan and it was intended to formalize ASEAN's position on the key issues in one single clearly written document, to manifest what could and what could not be agreed upon at this stage of ASEAN's development, he added.

The ASEAN Charter was signed by the leaders of the ten ASEAN member countries at the 13th Summit in Singapore as the grouping celebrated its 40th anniversary of its founding in 1967.

It came into force on December 15 this year as ASEAN foreign ministers met at the grouping's secretariat in Jakarta, about one month after Thailand became the last member country to deposit its ratifying documents, Bernama said.

The Charter sets out rules of membership, transforms ASEAN into a legal entity and envisages a single free trade area by 2015.

ASEAN currently groups ten member countries, namely Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.

(Xinhua News Agency December 19, 2008)