Vietnam will host a series of important summit meetings of the Association of the Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) as it takes the chairmanship of the group in 2010.

This is part of its responsibilities in taking the chairmanship, as stipulated in the ASEAN Charter, which came into force at the end of last year, and set out rules to make the group a legal entity as well as to establish a single market by 2015.

Accordingly, ASEAN ministerial meetings, the group’s summit meetings and those between the group and its partners such as ASEAN+1, ASEAN+3 will be held in Vietnam.

The Southeast Asian nation will be the host of the ASEAN Inter-Parliamentary Assembly (AIPA) and the East Asia Summit, which is a forum held by leaders of 16 countries in the East Asian region.

ASEAN consists of Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam./.