Addressing the plenary session of the 31st ASEAN Summit held in Manila, the capital city of the Philippines, on November 13, Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc highlighted three key areas of ASEAN cooperation. Accordingly, he called for determination to build a self-reliant ASEAN community that upholds common interests of citizens, develop the ASEAN Economic Community via economic connectivity and internal trade facilitation, and strengthen mutual support among member economies.
The opening ceremony of the 31st ASEAN Summit on November 13
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The event is of the greatest significance of ASEAN with the participation of ten ASEAN leaders (from Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam); and the bloc’s partners from China, Japan, South Korea, the US, Russia, India, Australia, New Zealand, regional and international organizations namely the EU and the UN.
Along with the 31st ASEAN Summit, the PM and the Vietnamese delegation are scheduled to participate in the 20th Meeting of the ASEAN Plus Three (China, Japan and the Republic of Korea), the ASEAN meetings with China, Japan, the RoK, India, the US, Canada, the EU, and the UN.
The PM will also attend the East Asia Summit, which includes ASEAN and its eight dialogue partners - Australia, China, India, Japan, New Zealand, the RoK, Russia, and the United States. On the occasion, the Vietnamese leader will join the ninth Mekong-Japan Summit and Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) Leaders’ Meeting.
Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc (fourth from left) and heads of delegations
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At the ASEAN-31 and meetings between ASEAN and partners, participating leaders are scheduled to discuss orientations and measures for strengthening connectivity to realize the ASEAN Community Vision 2025, thereby sending a message about an ASEAN of peace, stability and self-reliance that is open to the world. They will also look into ways to bolster ASEAN’s co-operation with partners while mulling over regional and international issues of mutual concern.
On the East Sea issue, PM Phuc welcomed ministers’ consensus on stance on principles at the 50th ASEAN Ministerial Meeting (AMM 50) held in Manila in August.
In such spirit, he asked for documents at the event to fully reflect the principles and stance featured at the joint statement of the AMM 50, including ensuring security, safety, maritime and aviation freedom in the East Sea; settling disputes by peaceful means in line with international law, the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), fully respecting legal and diplomatic processes and seriously implementing the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the East Sea (DOC).
The Vietnamese leader lauded ASEAN and China for ratifying the framework Code of Conduct in the East Sea (COC), adding that the effective and legally-binding COC should be negotiated in a practical and feasible way.
At the event, participating leaders agreed to sign a document, adopt 11 ones and take note of 11 others which cover issues of public concern such as workers’ rights and job opportunities, gender equality and improvement of women empowerment, youth, health matters like medicine resistance, malnutrition elimination, and business facilitation.
In the political-security pillar, they reaffirmed commitment to maintaining and promoting regional peace, security and stability as well as peacefully settling disputes, respect diplomatic and legal processes in line with international law, including the 1982 UNCLOS and the DOC, towards reaching an effective COC.
In the economic pillar, they hailed member economies’ economic growth forecast of 5 percent this year, higher than 4.8 percent in 2016 and is likely to rise to 5.1 percent next year. They stressed the need to continue boosting connectivity via facilitation of regional trade and micro, small and medium-sized enterprises amid the industrial revolution 4.0.
About ASEAN’s ties with partners, they shared view that countries should further deepen ties with regional and global organisations, especially in trade, investment, sustainable development, connectivity, development gap narrowing and other inter-sectoral issues.
Turning to regional and global issues, leaders looked into ways to curb terrorism, extremism, trans-national crime and hotspots in the region, including the East Sea, Korean peninsula and Myanmar’s Rakhine situation.
They consented to urge support and participation of partners, particularly in mechanisms led by ASEAN such as the ASEAN 1, ASEAN 3, the East Asia Summit, the ASEAN Regional Forum, and the ASEAN Defence Ministerial Meeting Plus in order to deal with emerging challenges.
