The community building of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations(ASEAN), gauged toward the goal of establishing an ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) by the end of 2015, is expected to be on the top agenda at a regional summit that kicks off here on Wednesday.

However, ASEAN officials have recently indicated that the date of Dec. 31, 2015, should not be seen as a deadline, but an important milestone in a progressive process. Officials are drawing up a new roadmap for ASEAN community building covering a 10-year period subsequent to the current roadmap for 2009-2015.

In developing the next roadmap, ASEAN leaders are poised to take into account upcoming challenges it faces in the aftermath of the global financial crisis, while continuing to work on unfinished job left over from the first roadmap, scholars told Xinhua in interviews ahead of the ASEAN summit and related meetings.

… Yang Razali Kassim, a senior fellow at the S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University, highlighted connectivity, consensus and ASEAN centrality as the three core issues that ASEAN leaders will have to tackle beyond 2015, with non-traditional security challenges as another key area of cooperation.

… While consensus is important for ASEAN to stay together, the ASEAN regional cooperation will have to be driven by economic cooperation, said Oh Ei Sun, senior fellow at S. Rajaratnam School of International Studies, Nanyang Technological University.