"They [the ASEAN leaders] agreed on the Asean Free Trade Area achieving the zero-percent level by the year 2003," Philippine Foreign Affairs Undersecretary Rodolfo Severino told reporters after the first day of a summit.
Thai Deputy Prime Minister Amnuay Virawan told reporters that talks to free up the financial and banking, tourism and telecommunications sectors would be completed by mid-1997, 18 months ahead of target.
The seven-member summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations featured a row over Jakarta's refusal to lift barriers on 15 key farm goods.
Thai Prime Minister Banharn Silpa-archa had called earlier Thursday for radical steps to accelerate tariff cuts and for talks on the three service sectors to be ended in 18 months.
ASEAN had originally planned to negotiate the liberalization of services over three years from January 1996.
Earlier, Singapore Premier Goh Chok Tong warned Asean that it was falling behind in the battle to lure investment dollars.
"ASEAN is clearly no longer at the head of the trade liberalization process. In terms of economic integration, ASEAN is actually behind other regions," Goh said in a speech at the opening of ASEAN's triannual summit gathering, held this year in Bangkok.
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