KUALA LUMPUR, April 20 -- The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (Asean) must re-examine its non-interference policy on crises faced by member states, said Tan Sri Syed Hamid Albar.

The chairman of the Advisory Group on Myanmar said the policy lends itself to external interference by countries from outside of South-east Asia.

"Cambodia is a classic textbook example of how Asean kept silent and foreign forces intervened," he said during a forum on the growing socio-political crisis in Myanmar at Universiti Kebangsaan Malaysia earlier today.

Syed Hamid was referring to the Cambodian-Vietnamese War in 1979, when Vietnam invaded Cambodia to oust the Communist Party of Kampuchea (Khmer Rouge), following wide scale totalitarian repressio...