Brunei joined ASEAN on January 7, 1984, one week after resuming full independence, and gives its ASEAN membership the highest priority in its foreign relations. Brunei joined the United Nations in September 1984. It also is a member of the Organisation of Islamic Cooperation (OIC), the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum and the Commonwealth of Nations. Brunei hosted the APEC Economic Leaders' Meeting in November 2000. In 2005 it attended the inaugural East Asia Summit.
Brunei has a number of diplomatic missions abroad and has close relations with Singapore, sharing an interchangeable currency regime as well as close military relations with the latter island-state. Aside from relations with other ASEAN states, Brunei also has extensive relations with the Islamic and Arab world.
Famous quotes containing the words foreign and/or relations:
“Friends, both the imaginary ones you build for yourself out of phrases taken from a living writer, or real ones from college, and relatives, despite all the waste of ceremony and fakery and the fact that out of an hour of conversation you may have only five minutes in which the old entente reappears, are the only real means for foreign ideas to enter your brain.”
—Nicholson Baker (b. 1957)
“When one walks, one is brought into touch first of all with the essential relations between one’s physical powers and the character of the country; one is compelled to see it as its natives do. Then every man one meets is an individual. One is no longer regarded by the whole population as an unapproachable and uninteresting animal to be cheated and robbed.”
—Aleister Crowley (1875–1947)