Foreign Ministers of Cambodia, Myanmar, Thailand, Vietnam and Japan and the assistant to the Lao Foreign Minister have confirmed their determination to accelerate cooperation and consolidate their multi-faceted relations.

The confirmation was made at the third Mekong-Japan Ministerial Meeting under the chairmanship of Deputy Prime Minister cum Foreign Minister Pham Gia Khiem in Hanoi on July 21 on the sidelines of the 43rd ASEAN Ministerial Meeting (AMM-43).

The third Mekong-Japan Ministerial Meeting is the first of its kind following the first Mekong-Japan Summit that took place in Tokyo in November 2009.

The meeting reviewed the implementation of commitments among countries at the first summit stated in the Tokyo Declaration and the Mekong-Japan Action Plan 63.

It also recognised the initial results of projects and programmes of the Action Plan 63 and the Vietnamese Prime Minister’s initiative on human resource development and the protection of the Mekong river sources raised at the first summit.

The participants highlighted Japan ’s initiative “A decade toward the Green Mekong” and discussed a number of regional and international issues of mutual concern, including the Korean peninsula and the UN reform.

They also recognised new developments in the cooperation between Mekong countries and Japan and reached consensus on ways to implement in order to boost this cooperation mechanism.

They agreed to host the second Mekong-Japan Summit on the sidelines of the ASEAN Summit in October 2010 in Vietnam and that Japan will host the fourth ministerial meeting in 2011.

The ministers concluded the conference with the adoption of the President’s declaration./.