"It is an urgent task to enhance comprehensive and integrated development, build complementarity, reinforce Asian values, abate tensions and seek for peaceful resolution to political disputes in Asia," Musharraf told the Boao Forum for Asia in southern China's Hainan province.

Trends towards regional and sub-regional integration is a character of the global scenario, Musharraf was quoted by the Xinhua news agency as saying.

"Economic complementarities between the sub-regions of Asia must be identified, developed and realized in the shortest time frame," he told some 1,200 government and business leaders and academics.

Musharraf was speaking to a forum attended by Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao, Singapore Prime Minister Goh Chok Tong, Tajikistan President Emomali Rakhmonov, Hong Kong Chief Executive Tung Chee-hwa and Macau Chief Executive Edmund Ho.

Deputy premiers from South Korea, Vietnam, Turkmenistan and Laos were also in attendance.

Musharraf said Pakistan was committed to developing regional growth through organizations like the South Asian Association for Regional Cooperation (Saarc) and the Economic Cooperation Organization of Central and West Asian Countries, but added that regional tensions were affecting cooperation.

"Tensions in Asia and the instability in Afghanistan have adversely impacted upon the two regional organizations dedicated to economic, technological and cultural cooperation," he said.