MANILA, Philippines--The Philippines will be the stage of a regional disaster response exercise of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), Foreign Affairs Sec. Alberto Romulo said.

Borne of a pact to come to the aid of a calamity-stricken neighbor, the 10-member ASEAN is set to hold a joint disaster response drill here around the first half of 2009 to test international coordination in heeding catastrophes.

"You know, we have been beset by so many natural disasters, recently we have [cyclone] Nargis in Burma, earthquake and floods in China and of course the Philippines, with floods, the natural disaster caused by Typhoon Frank [Fengshen]," Romulo said Friday on the sidelines of the Department of Foreign Affairs foundation day celebration.

ASEAN foreign and defense ministers had recently agreed to formalize a mechanism of regional assistance in times of calamities, a need further underlined by the crises in food, rice supply and energy, said Romulo.

He said members states of the ASEAN Regional Forum, a 27-member security assembly that includes the United States, Russia, the European Union, and China, may also take part in the exercise. The ARF had forged a pact setting international disaster relief guidelines at the ASEAN Summit in Manila last year.

"That's being worked out because the purpose of that is for each neighbor to help each other, so for it to be effective, the more countries pooling their resources together, the better," said Romulo.

Details of the drill—the scenario, participants, Philippine location and date—are still being planned, but Romulo said the exercise might be held around May.

In Washington, a State Department official of ARF member US said earlier this month that the ARF may finally agree on holding the joint disaster response exercise during Singapore talks this week.

The ARF has been discussing international disaster relief efforts since the region got a wake up call in December 2004, when a tsunami triggered by beneath the Indian Ocean swept through shores in Indonesia, Sri Lanka, Thailand and India and other nearby countries, killing more than 200,000 people.