The Senior Officials’ Meetings (SOM) of the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), the ASEAN+3 and the Informal Consultations among East Asian Summit (EAS) Senior Officials took place in the central province of Quang Nam from May 19-20.

The meetings, chaired by Assistant to the Vietnamese Foreign Minister and Head of SOM ASEAN Vietnam Pham Quang Vinh, aimed to prepare for the 43 rd ASEAN Foreign Ministers’ Meeting and related meetings to be held in Hanoi from July 19-23.

They also reviewed the effectiveness of cooperation in the framework of these forums over the past time as well as put forth development orientations and activities for the coming time.

The ASEAN+3 SOM focused on assessing the cooperation between ASEAN and its three partners, including China, Japan and the Republic of Korea, in various fields, especially economics, finance, energy and food security, climate change and socio-culture.

The officials also discussed the implementation of decisions made during the 12 th ASEAN+3 Summit in October 2009 and preparations for the ASEAN+3 Foreign Ministers’ Meeting and the 13 th ASEAN+3 Summit in Hanoi in July and October this year respectively.

At the Informal Consultations among EAS Senior Officials, the delegates discussed steps to further the results of the 4th EAS Summit and preparations for the EAS Foreign Ministers’ Informal Consultations in July 2010 and the 5 th EAS Summit in October this year in Hanoi.

The participants also exchanged views on the EAS’s development orientations, especially its cooperation in five priority areas as well as several issues relating to the EAS mechanism, including the expansion of the forum.

Meanwhile, the ARF SOM reviewed the ARF’s activities during the 2009-2010 period, especially in the fields of trust building, preventive diplomacy, disaster mitigation, marine security, and terrorism and transnational crime prevention.

Regarding the ARF’s future orientations, the delegates defined that the ARF’s future priority is to boost trust building measures while gradually appoaching preventive diplomacy, finalise a draft Hanoi Plan of Action, implement the Statement on ARF Vision and consider a list of activities to be submitted to the 17 th ARF Ministerial Meeting.

The meeting also discussed varios regional and international issues of common concern, particularly the issue of non-traditional security, the situation on the Korean Peninsular, in Myanmar and Thailand as well as the East Sea issue./.