JAKARTA -- Negotiations for a Southeast Asia-China free trade area with a potential combined market of 1.7 billion people will start next year, the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) said Wednesday.

ASEAN Secretary General Rodolfo Severino said Southeast Asian leaders will sign an agreement on comprehensive economic cooperation between ASEAN and China during the grouping's summit in Cambodia on November 4.

The agreement would lead to the creation of an ASEAN-China free trade area within 10 years and pave the way for the elimination of tariff and non-tariff barriers on trade in goods, ASEAN said in a statement.

"With a deepened AFTA (ASEAN Free Trade Area) and the creation of the ASEAN-China free trade area, companies operating in ASEAN would have 1.7 billion consumers, with a combined gross domestic product of $1.5 trillion to two trillion dollars as their potential market," Severino said in the statement.

Under the AFTA, which came into force this year, six of ASEAN's more established members have cut tariffs on most goods traded within the region to between zero and five percent, AFP reported.

Newer members Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar and Vietnam have until 2005 to follow suit.

Severino said Southeast Asian economic integration was vital if the region was to compete globally.

"The ASEAN market has to approach the level of integration of China's market if the ASEAN economy is to have a chance of competing for investments and for markets in terms of efficiency, productivity and cost," he said.

China has been getting the lion's share of foreign direct investments into Asia at the expense of Southeast Asia as investors take advantage of the regional giant's potential market of more than one billion people.

ASEAN groups Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.