The venue for the 14th Asian Cup, brought forward by a year to avoid clashing with the European Championship and Olympics, will be Southeast Asia, with AFC officials already studying several bids.

"We have decided that the next Asian Cup will be held in the ASEAN region and have invited bids from those countries," AFC general secretary Peter Velappan told Reuters by telephone from Beijing.

"We are radically changing the hosting system, which means there is the possibility of co-hosting."

The AFC will choose the 2007 Asian Cup hosts at the end of the 2004 finals, which take place in China from July 17 to August 7 with a record 16 teams involved.

Velappan was instrumental in convincing FIFA to accept an unprecedented joint bid from South Korea and Japan to host the 2002 World Cup

The AFC has adopted a regional rotation policy for hosting the Asian Cup. Lebanon staged the last finals in 2000.

After the Middle East and East Asia, ASEAN will host the next tournament, followed by South Asia.

The decision to hold the next Asian Cup a year early was in order to raise the profile of the tournament, which traditionally falls in the same year as the European Championship and Olympics.

"After the success of Asian teams at the last World Cup, we want the Asian Cup to make a big impact, not only in Asia but around the world," Velappan said.

"That's why we want it to stand on its own and not have to compete with the European Championship or the Olympics."

The Asian Cup would revert to its four-year cycle after the 2007 finals with South Asia hosting the competition in 2011.