This volume of collected writings on ASEAN is in honour of Professor Kernial Singh Sandhu, Director of ISEAS for 20 years since 1972. His sudden death on 2 December 1992 was truly a great loss to all of us. A few days before his demise, Professor Sandhu, Dr M. Sadli and I attended an IDRC conference, which Kernial helped organize, in New Delhi and Bombay to look at how India can learn from the success stories of the Newly Industrialized Economies (NIEs) and member countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN). He is remembered as a person with incredible energy and enthusiasm, bringing together technocrats, government officials, and scholars to promote and foster regional consciousness, an outlook captured aptly in the phrase “Southeast Asian studies for Southeast Asians”. He is a key figure in linking the Asian intellectual community with their counterparts all over the world.

Professor Sandhu devoted his professional life to working tirelessly to propel greater ASEAN co-operation. His dream was to see active regional co-operation and economic integration in ASEAN. Through annual ASEAN Roundtables, he gathered together officials, scholars and business people to examine the problems and prospects for ASEAN co-operation. His efforts were not in vain; in January 1992, ASEAN countries agreed to form an ASEAN Free Trade Area (AFTA). The papers in this volume were presented at the ASEAN Roundtable “25 Years of ASEAN — AFTA: The Way Ahead” that was held in Singapore, 3–5 September 1992. This volume — unlike past volumes where the concern was on what ASEAN should do to achieve greater economic cooperation — is most appropriate and timely for it deals with how ASEAN should proceed to achieve the goals of AFTA in 15 years.

Professor Sandhu led the Institute of Southeast Asian Studies (ISEAS) for 20 years and was the first Asian director of the institute since its inception in 1968.