Finance officials of the 13 nations, who met on the sidelines of the Asian Development Bank (ADB) annual conference in Istanbul of Turkey, appeared determined to turn their various bilateral agreements into some sort of multilateral accord.

Masahiro Kawai, special adviser to the ADB president, who monitored the ASEAN-plus-3 meeting, said it was a "step towards multilateralization," adding that a "de facto Asian monetary fund" may eventually be created.

China, Japan, and the RoK had sent the first signal at a three-way meeting on May 4, when they called for an expansion of the Chiang Mai initiative, a network of bilateral currency swaps with the ASEAN.

The initiative launched in Chiang Mai, Thailand, in May 2000, in the wake of the 1997 Asian financial crisis, involved wealthier countries, such as Japan, the RoK, and China, making emergency foreign currency loans to ASEAN nations in the event another currency crisis ever menaced those nations.