The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) is assessing Timor-Leste’s application to join the 10-member bloc amid various political and security issues it faces in the region.

Timor-Leste, which lies south of the Philippines and Indonesia, applied to join the organization in 2011.

Asean in a statement said that newly appointed Secretary General Le Luong Minh met with Dr. Jose Luis Guterres, Timor-Leste foreign minister, “to update the latter on the work carried out by the Asean Coordinating Council Working Group in assessing Timor Leste’s application to join Asean and specifically, the implications of Timor-Leste’s accession to Asean in all three pillars [political-security, economic and socio-cultural],” according to a statement.

For his part, Guterres informed Minh of the various preparations being taken by Timor-Leste in the wake of its application to be an Asean member.

It is slated to host a series of seminars on the study done by Japanese experts “on the challenges faced by Timor-Leste in joining Asean.”

Timor-Leste’s Prime Minister Xanana Gusmao is expected to visit Asean countries this year to promote his state’s development.

About 80 percent of the country’s trade is with its neighbors—Indonesia and Singapore.

However, other Asean nations have been seen to take an interest on Timor-Leste as Guterres reported that its embassies from the 10 nations requested to facilitate the submission of “tender proposals” by companies for infrastructure projects there.

“To date, Indonesia, Singapore and the Philippines have been the three most active Asean member-states participating in the development projects of Timor-Leste,” the statement said.

Asean groups the Philippines, Singapore, Indonesia, Vietnam, Thailand, Myanmar, Cambodia, Laos, Malaysia and Brunei Darussalam.

Timor-Leste, or East Timor, is a unitary parliamentary democratic republic and a predominantly Roman Catholic country like the Philippines. It is expected to have the sixth biggest domestic product growth in the world by 2013.

The tiny island-nation, with a population of a little over a million in 2010, is a member of the United Nations and the Community of Portuguese Language Countries.