The leaders of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) on Sunday set December 31, 2015 as the deadline for the realization of an ASEAN Community, a Cambodian senior official said Sunday.

The deadline was unanimously agreed by the bloc's leaders during the 21st ASEAN Summit in Phnom Penh, the capital of Cambodia.

"The leaders decided to take the actual date of December 31, 2015 as the deadline for the realization of ASEAN community building," Kao Kim Hourn, secretary of state at the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, said in a press briefing after the Summit.

The announced deadline was one year behind the original schedule of January 1, 2015.

The ASEAN Community, which is expected to materialize in 2015, will be based on three pillars, namely a security community, an economic community and a socio-cultural community.

Malaysia will have the responsibility of organizing the celebrations, as ASEAN heads to the 2015 Community under Kuala Lumpur's chairmanship. This is just one of the initiatives decided by the leaders of the ASEAN member states in the Cambodian Capital Sunday.

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

(Xinhua News Agency November 18, 2012)