BANDAR SERI BEGAWAN -- U.S.-led global market volatility is unlikely to plunge East Asian economies into a 1997-type financial crisis because the region is now protected by huge current account surpluses and foreign exchange reserves with low external debt risk, political leaders and analysts believe.

Aside from the strong economic fundamentals, East Asia has a network of six bilateral currency swap arrangements led by China, Japan and South Korea to ward off speculators intending to corner regional currencies, AFP quoted ASEAN Secretary General Rodolfo Severino as saying here.

He said the current swap deals run up to $17 billion, with eight more bilateral swap arrangements being negotiated in the region.

Severino was speaking on the sidelines of a meeting of ASEAN senior officials ahead of foreign ministers' talks beginning today.

He said the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) also wanted to expand a surveillance mechanism for macroeconomic trends in the region to cover China, South Korea and Japan "so that we are not caught by surprise and be alerted to serious problems that may arise" in East Asia. "The problem now is things move so fast and in such large scale because of technology and new financial instruments. So, trading is done fast, anonymously and on a big scale and this is very frightening."

Dubbed the most vicious bear market in decades, U.S. financial market turbulence rocked stocks and currencies in recent weeks, with many of the Asian share benchmarks breaching psychological levels.

Some analysts ask whether East Asian economies, which have been forecast to post a moderate rebound this year from a slowdown in 2001, can cope with this persistent market turbulence.

Others wonder whether the region is vulnerable to another 1997-type financial crisis, which plunged the region into its worst recession in history.

"The single most important risk to the current forecast of a moderate rebound in East Asia may arise from any continuation of the recent deterioration in the U.S. financial markets during the balance of this year," the Asian Development Bank (ADB) warned in a report this month.

But ADB economist Srinivasa Madhur told AFP he did not expect the region to be swamped by more financial turmoil following the recent stock plunge.

"This is based on the many prudential indicators we have been watching," said Madhur, the principal economist at the ADB's regional economic monitoring unit helping ASEAN to track the macroeconomic trends in crisis-hit nations.

East Asia's financial crisis in 1997 came amid languishing fundamentals, triggered off by an influx of speculative capital inflows.