The ASEAN Post Ministerial Conference (PMC) with its partners Japan, Australia and the Republic of Korea (RoK) took place in Bali, Indonesia on July 21.

The ASEAN - Japan Foreign Ministers’ Meeting, chaired by Indonesian Foreign Minister Marty Natalegawa and his Japanese counterpart Takeaki Matsumoto, reviewed and discussed the implementation of the Tokyo Declaration for the Dynamic and Enduring ASEAN-Japan Partnership in the New Millennium, as well as an action plan for this declaration to promote the efficiency of cooperation and cope with existing traditional and non traditional challenges.

Japan pledged to support ASEAN in the implementation of the Master Plan on ASEAN Connectivity (MPAC) and narrowing the development gap through capacity building of growth areas in ASEAN sub-areas, such as the Greater Mekong Sub-Region, the Brunei –Indonesia – Malaysia - the Philippines East of ASEAN Growth Area, the Cambodia –Laos – Myanmar - Vietnam Growth Area and the Indonesia – Malaysia - Thailand Growth Triangle.

At the ASEAN - RoK Foreign Ministers’ Meeting, co-chaired by Lao Foreign Minister Thongloun Sisoulith and his RoK counterpart Sim Sung Hwan, the two sides discussed the growing bilateral cooperation in three pillars of the community that ASEAN is forwarding by 2015, agreed to promote cooperation in the fields of security and politics through regular dialogues on international and regional issues.

They considered the implementation of the Joint Declaration on ASEAN-RoK Strategic Partnership for the 2011-2012 period and the Action Plan for the 2011-2015 period, adopted at the 13 th ASEAN-RoK Summit in Hanoi last year.

RoK also pledged to support MPAC through joint projects on transport cooperation in the 2010-2014 period.

At the ASEAN - Australia Foreign Ministers’ Meeting, chaired by Singaporean Foreign Minister Kasiviswanathan Shanmugam and his Australian counterpart Hon Kevin Rudd, the two sides focused their discussion on bilateral cooperation and agreed that the ASEAN-Australia partnership was incessantly strengthened in the fields of security and politics on the basis of an action plan for the 2008-2013 period.

The meeting also focused on a cooperation plan against human trafficking through developing educational programmes on law enforcement within the framework of ASEAN+1 and ASEAN+3.

Australia pledged to continue its financial assistance for the second phase of the ASEAN-Australia Development Cooperation Programme in the 2008-2015 period./.