LANGKAWI, Malaysia, March 16 — Defense minister from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations will study the African Union model in their quest to set up an integrated peacekeeping force of the 10-member regional grouping, Malaysian Defense Minister Hishammuddin Hussein said Monday.

“African Union peacekeeping forces “go under the U.N. (flag), so why not ASEAN? We just have to check how they do it,” Hishammuddin told reporters after chairing a one-day meeting of ASEAN defense ministers at the resort island of Langkawi off the northern Kedah state.

Malaysia, which took over the rotating ASEAN chair this year, revived the idea of an ASEAN peacekeeping force that was first mooted over a decade ago among ASEAN member countries.

…”If an ASEAN peacekeeping force were to materialize, it would likely be a land-based force, consisting of ground troops and personnel, rather than a force oriented to a naval configuration,” Graham Ong-Webb, a research fellow in Singapore’s Institute of Defence and Strategic Studies, told Kyodo News.