HONG KONG (MarketWatch) -- East Asia leaders agreed to a timetable for fine tuning an $80 billion foreign-exchange reserve pool that will be used a countermeasure to defend currencies and backstop Asian economies amid the global financial crisis of how it will work by November and to have leaders formally endorse it by December.

The agreement, which essentially firms up an earlier commitment in May, was reached by leaders of China, South Korea, Japan and the 10 nations comprising the Association of South East Asian Nations, or Asean, at a meeting in Beijing.