KUALA LUMPUR, Malaysia – Following a meeting in Malaysia on Wednesday (July 17th), Indonesian Environment Minister Balthasar Kambuaya said he would like to see his country ratify a regional smog-fighting treaty, AFP reported.

"We hope we can ratify the agreement by the end of the year or early next year," Kambuaya told reporters.

He and counterparts from four other ASEAN countries, which together form the Southeast Asian bloc's "haze committee", met to discuss ways to prevent fires on Sumatra. The fires are deliberately set as a means of clearing land for farming but led to a blanket of choking smog and haze that settled over Singapore and Malaysia for days last month, posing significant health hazards.

T. Jayabalan, a public health consultant and adviser to Friends of the Earth Malaysia, said that even if Jakarta ratifies the treaty, enforcement may remain an issue. "It is a lukewarm measure. You can have all the regulations, but if enforcement is lax, we will continue to have haze."