Deputy PM Pham Binh Minh attends ASEAN meetings in Bangkok

 

Bangkok (VNA) – Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Pham Binh Minh attended the 20th ASEAN Political-Security Community (APSC) Council Meeting and the 24th ASEAN Coordinating Council (ACC) Meeting in Bangkok, Thailand on November 2.

Those meetings are within the framework of the 35th ASEAN Summit and related meetings in the Thai capital from November 2-4.

Addressing the meetings, Deputy PM Minh spoke highly of ASEAN’s achievements after more than four years of implementing the ASEAN Community Vision 2025, contributing to maintaining an environment of peace, security, stability; facilitating regional cooperation and development, enhancing the bloc’s capacity of responding to challenges while intensifying economic connectivity to bring practical benefits to people in the region.

He said 2020 is an important year marking five years of the implementation of ASEAN Community Vision 2025 and comprehensive plans to build the Community’s pillars, along with other major anniversaries.

Therefore, Minh suggested ASEAN should conduct mid-term review of ASEAN Community Vision 2025 fulfillment, identify outstanding problems and seek suitable solutions to them, while outlining new orientations and improving the efficiency of cooperation mechanisms led by the bloc, contributing to strengthening ASEAN’s central role in an open, transparent and rules-based regional architecture.

Amid rapid and complicated developments in the world, he said the strengthening of ASEAN unity and solidarity continues to hold a strategic significance and lay the foundation for ASEAN’s success over the past years and in the future.

ASEAN needs to further improve its capacity of responding to opportunities and challenges arising from the fourth industrial revolution, towards spreading the message of a dynamic grouping with sustainable and inclusive development.

Regarding ASEAN’s political-security pillar, the Vietnamese Deputy PM highlighted the need to popularise values, principles and standards of conduct that are generally accepted in the region.

At the same time, he called for stepping up dialogue, building trust, creating an environment conducive for negotiations on an effective and efficient Code of Conduct in the East Sea in line with international law, including the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, thus maintaining ASEAN’s central role and leading position in cooperation processes for peace, security and stability in the region.

At the events, ASEAN ministers discussed in depth regional and global issues of shared concern, including the fight against terrorism, extreme violence, trans-national crimes, cyber and maritime security, and innovation capacity building./.