BANDAR SERI BEGAWAN -- China and Southeast Asia should be able to solve several problems that have cropped up in their effort to set up the world's biggest free trade area, Foreign Minister Tang Jiaxuan said Thursday.

A framework agreement for an ASEAN-China Free Trade Area with an integrated market of 1.7 billion consumers is expected to be inked at the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) leaders summit in Cambodia in November.

Among problems that have surfaced in the negotiations is the time-table of tariff reductions, sources say.

But Tang said at a meeting with his ASEAN counterparts in Brunei that he was confident the two sides would be able to resolve the hitches and emerge with the framework pact as scheduled, AFP reported.

China's Deputy Foreign Minister Wang Yi said separately Thursday that Beijing was receptive to an ASEAN request that China cut tariffs on a number of ASEAN goods before the Free Trade Area is established.

Wang said that would not conflict with China's commitments as a new member of the World Trade Organization (WTO).

"It will be within the agreements of the WTO," Wang said, adding that China has basically agreed to the request, but that the details needed to be worked out. Tang also said China's overall relationship with ASEAN has gained a "new momentum of development, which should be carried forward."

"There have been constant exchanges of high level visits, markedly increased mutual trust in the political arena and continuously strengthened economic cooperation and trade," Tang noted.

Bilateral trade between China and ASEAN countries had maintained an average annual growth rate of 15 percent, he said.

Bilateral trade in the first half of this year reached $23.55 billion, representing an increase of 18.7 percent over the same period last year, he said.

China and ASEAN last November agreed to set up the world's biggest free trade area in 10 years. At the meeting Thursday, Tang also presented China's position paper to ASEAN members reiterating its call for a "new security concept."

In the paper, Beijing said all countries should transcend differences in ideology and social system, discard the cold war mentality and power politics and refrain from mutual suspicion and hostility.

Countries should also refrain from interfering in each others' internal affairs, it said.

The paper reflected Beijing's problems with the United States.

China in recent years has actively cultivated relations with Southeast Asian countries -- mainly by trying to appease their fears that it could be a military threat in the region and trying to forge closer economic ties.

But the United States stole the limelight from China at the ASEAN ministerial and the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) meetings in Brunei this week, signing a broad anti-terrorism accord with Southeast Asian countries.

This week, China proposed its own East Asian anti-terrorism mechanism -- a regular ministerial meeting on counter-terrorism for ASEAN and China, Japan and South Korea.