The meetings, chaired by Assistant to the Vietnamese Foreign Ministerand Head of SOM ASEAN Vietnam Pham Quang Vinh, aimed to prepare for the43 rd ASEAN Foreign Ministers’ Meeting and related meetings to be heldin Hanoi from July 19-23.
They also reviewed the effectiveness of cooperation in the frameworkof these forums over the past time as well as put forth developmentorientations and activities for the coming time.
The ASEAN+3 SOM focused on assessing the cooperation between ASEANand its three partners, including China, Japan and the Republic ofKorea, in various fields, especially economics, finance, energy and foodsecurity, climate change and socio-culture.
The officials also discussed the implementation of decisions madeduring the 12 th ASEAN+3 Summit in October 2009 and preparations forthe ASEAN+3 Foreign Ministers’ Meeting and the 13 th ASEAN+3 Summit inHanoi in July and October this year respectively.
At the Informal Consultations among EAS Senior Officials, thedelegates discussed steps to further the results of the 4th EAS Summitand preparations for the EAS Foreign Ministers’ Informal Consultationsin July 2010 and the 5 th EAS Summit in October this year in Hanoi.
The participants also exchanged views on the EAS’s developmentorientations, especially its cooperation in five priority areas as wellas several issues relating to the EAS mechanism, including the expansionof the forum.
Meanwhile, the ARF SOM reviewed the ARF’s activities during the2009-2010 period, especially in the fields of trust building, preventivediplomacy, disaster mitigation, marine security, and terrorism andtransnational crime prevention.
Regarding the ARF’s future orientations, the delegates defined thatthe ARF’s future priority is to boost trust building measures whilegradually appoaching preventive diplomacy, finalise a draft Hanoi Planof Action, implement the Statement on ARF Vision and consider a list ofactivities to be submitted to the 17 th ARF Ministerial Meeting.
The meeting also discussed varios regional and international issuesof common concern, particularly the issue of non-traditional security,the situation on the Korean Peninsular, in Myanmar and Thailand as wellas the East Sea issue./.