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s Indonesia and Thailand are both assuming strategic international roles next year, they are saying they would first look into Malaysian Prime Minister Mahathir Mohamad’s proposal for a regional free trade zone.

Indonesia’s Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi said the two countries are expected to communicate more intensively as Thailand takes ASEAN chairmanship, while Indonesia becomes a temporary member of the United Nations Security Council.

“One of Indonesia’s priorities was to empower regional organizations to respond to issues in the region, including through ASEAN,” she said after a joint commission meeting with her Thai counterpart in Yogyakarta on Friday. She said the two countries agreed to alter their relationship into a strategic partnership, noting that in previous meetings the two countries signed five documents involving defense, bilateral trade, investment and narcotics, among others.

She said the Indonesian government would study Mahathir’s proposal because even though he had proposed an East Asia economic caucus (EAEC) as a regional free trade zone in 1997, the issue has not recently been discussed within ASEAN. Mahathir’s proposal never took off because of opposition from the United States to an EAEC consisting of the members of ASEAN, plus China, Japan and South Korea.

“I am still in favor of the EAEC. In the past, there had been objections from the United States but now the US is in isolation,” Mahathir told The Star last month.

Thailand’s Foreign Minister Don Pramudwinai said his country had yet to study the proposal.

“We haven’t really looked so much into it, but our friend Mahathir has always brought very good ideas; we certainly looking at his ideas,” he said. ”We are working on our [ASEAN] chairmanship and preparations for all issues of the past and present, which we could bring to the future.”

Aaron Connelly, director of Southeast Asia Project at the Sydney-based Lowy Institute said Pramudwinai might not want to call the free trade zone an EAEC, but rather an “ASEAN Plus Three” cooperation. “The latter terminology has less baggage attached, but the countries involved would be the same,” he said.

Retno said once Thailand becomes the ASEAN chair, Indonesia expects ASEAN unity and centrality to remain its priorities and for the ownership of Indo-Pacific concept to remain in ASEAN.

“Indonesia always wants ASEAN in the central of the Indo-Pacific discussion,” she said.

Connelly said Jakarta and Bangkok could work well together because both were “fundamentally status quo, non-aligned powers” who take similar approaches to a number of issues. He said both prefer to manage the Rohingya crisis, rather than put pressure on Myanmar, and both have taken moderate positions regarding Beijing’s assertive stance in the South China Sea.