Vietnam attends FEALAC seventh Foreign Ministers Meeting

Illustrative image (Source: VNA)

A Vietnamese delegation led by Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Ha Kim Ngoc attended the seventh Foreign Ministers Meeting (FMM 7) of the Forum for East Asia – Latin American Cooperation (FEALAC), held in San Jose, capital of Costa Rica, on August 21.

The meeting on the theme of ‘Two Regions, One Vision’, drew the participation of 35 out of 36 member countries, comprising 16 East Asian countries and 19 Latin American states.

The FMM 7 focused on discussing orientations, initiatives, and measures to cement the forum’s institutions and organisation, and improve the effective cooperation within the forum in the time ahead.

The meeting adopted the San Jose Statement and reports of the forum’s 16th Senior Officials Meeting and working groups.

Besides specific cooperation, the San Jose Statement emphasised that activities and cooperation within the Forum are implemented on the basis of international law and established international principles.

Addressing the meeting, Deputy Minister Ngoc highly spoke of Thailand’s and Costa Rica’s positive role as regional coordinators in promoting the progress of FEALAC during 2013-2015.

He also thanked member countries for their cooperation when Vietnam and Ecuador co-chaired the Working Group on Culture, Youth, Gender and Sports in the past term as well as their trust and support for the two countries to continue taking these roles during the 2015-2017 term.

Ngoc also put forwards some big solutions the FEALAC should do in upcoming time.
On the occasion, Ngoc also invited countries to send delegations to attend the seventh Hue Festival within the ‘East Asia – Latin America Cultural Exchange via Hue Festival’ project.

He also invited mayors and governors of cultural heritage cities from member countries of the FEALAC to attend the first meeting of the ‘Network of FEALAC cultural cities’ project, which is initiated and hosted by Vietnam in Hue city at the end of April, 2016.

The FMM 8 will take place in the Republic of Korea in 2017.

On the sidelines of the FMM 7, Ngoc had bilateral meetings with senior foreign officials from Uruguay, Ecuador, Colombia, Cuba and Japan.

At the meetings, the two sides discussed preparations for mutual official visits by leaders at the end of 2015 and the early of 2016; agreed on measures to boost bilateral cooperation, particularly efforts to finalise legal frameworks through negotiations for cooperation agreements on economy, trade, investment, agriculture, culture, science and technology.

On multilateral cooperation, all countries affirmed their intention to tighten cooperation with Vietnam at international organisations, especially at the United Nations and support Vietnam’s bids for a position in t he United Nations Security Council in the 2020-2021 term, the UN Economic and Social Council for 2016-2018 and the executive board of the UN Educational, Scientific and Cultural Organisation for 2015-2019.

With regard to global and regional issues, the countries shared and expressed their support of Vietnam’s position on solving sovereignty disputes via dialogue and peaceful measures in line with international law, especially the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea.-VNA