Permanent Representative of the Philippines to ASEAN Ambassador Noel Servigon (Photo: VNA)
Jakarta (VNA) - Vietnam is an invaluable member of the ASEAN Community and has activelyshepherded a number of important initiatives and led efforts that continue to enrichthe ASEAN agenda and experience, Permanent Representative of thePhilippines to ASEAN Ambassador Noel Servigon told the Vietnam News Agency's reporter in Jakarta.
The positiveeffects born during Vietnam’s Chairmanship of ASEAN in 2010 alone, with its theme“Towards the ASEAN Community: From Vision to Action”, continue to this very day,the ambassador said. Among the effects are the raising of the profile of the SoutheastAsian Nuclear-Weapon-Free Zone Treaty in multilateral forums, strengthening theEast Asia Summit with the inclusion of more non-ASEAN Member States as participatingcountries, leading discussions on efforts to restore and sustain the financial healthof the region, which was recovering from a financial crisis, promoting sustainabledevelopment, narrowing the development gap in ASEAN, and fostering infrastructuredevelopment and ASEAN connectivity, he added.
Servigon recalledthe time when he served as Ambassador of the Philippines to Vietnam, saying he sawthe tremendous progress Vietnam was making at that time.
It was heart-warmingto witness the widespread enthusiasm exhibited at all levels of society in Vietnamwhen ASEAN celebrated its Golden Year in 2017, he remarked. “Indeed, from what Iobserved, the Vietnamese people hold their country’s membership and engagement inthe ASEAN Community in the highest regard,” he said.
He went onto highlight Vietnam’s role as Chair of ASEAN this year. “With the year 2020 comesthe task of negotiating numerous successor Plans of Action with Dialogue Partners,as well as with the UN,” the ambassador said, adding that the Philippines appreciatesVietnam’s leadership in ensuring these Plans of Action are finalised within theyear and contribute to the further strengthening of ASEAN’s external relations whileupholding the primacy of the bloc’s centrality.
This year,Vietnam is also steering efforts to conduct a comprehensive mid-term review of allcommunity blueprints that guide economic, socio-cultural, and political policies,he continued. The outcomes of these reviews will ensure that ASEAN’s growth anddevelopment continue on the correct path to secure a better collective future forall peoples of the bloc.
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The diplomatalso praised Vietnam’s leadership in manoeuvring ASEAN through the global COVID-19crisis, saying the country’s remarkable success in containing the pandemic has servedas a model not only in ASEAN but around the world.
“Our concertedefforts this year will help ensure that all member states emerge stronger and betterequipped to respond and recover from future pandemics,” he said.
Accordingto the ambassador, ASEAN has become one of the most important regional organisationsin the world. An economic dynamo and a major player in the region’s political-securityarchitecture and the world, ASEAN has gone from strength-to-strength and has continuouslyrisen to myriad challenges.
A key aspectof ASEAN’s strength as a regional organisation is the powerful sense of community,one that has been carefully nurtured through the decades, threading across the tenvery diverse member states, particularly among ASEAN’s leaders and policy-makers,he said.
He added thatthe triumph of cooperation and consensus over conflict continues to shape ASEAN’sachievements in a region that could have been so easily fraught with destabilisingissues. “This has brought about an ecosystem of peaceful co-existence in the regionand underpins the concerted efforts of member states towards common aspirationsacross the economic, socio-cultural, and political areas,” the ambassador said./.
