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M Dung: ASEAN vital in East Asia Community
A dynamic and closely-integrated ASEAN plays a key role and works as an adhesive in the process of building the East Asia Community, said Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung at the World Economic Forum's special session on the East Asia Community (EAC).
Dung attended the session in Davos, Switzerland, on Saturday, together with leaders from Thailand, Indonesia, Singapore, Japan, South Korea and Australia.
Addressing the session, he stressed that the year 2010 would be a "transitional" year for ASEAN, especially for stepping up the bloc's community-building efforts.
"As the current chair of ASEAN at a time when the group adopts the theme of โTowards the ASEAN Community: from vision to action,' Viet Nam will work closely with other member countries in practical activities to effectively put into practice the ASEAN Charter, step up the effective implementation of adopted programmes and roadmaps tailored for the building of the ASEAN Community, and at the same time further expand and deepen the group's ties with its partners," said Dung.
He affirmed that Viet Nam would be responsible for co-ordinating and boosting ASEAN+3 co-operation and the East Asia Summit.
Dung called on ASEAN's development partners to continue assisting the group in accelerating its building process, particularly in narrowing the development gap and promoting internal linkages to help establish the ASEAN Community in 2015.
"To promote sustainable development in the region and maintain Asia as an area of dynamic growth, it is necessary to enhance financial-monetary co-operation, deploy the Chieng Mai Initiative Multilateralisation Agreement as soon as possible and improve the capacity of the regional banking system," he said.
"East Asian countries should make more active and practical contributions to the reforms of financial-monetary institutions and global governance, including the completion of G-20 mechanism," Dung said.
At the same time, East Asian countries should push up economic, trade and investment co-operation within the region and implement roadmaps for the planned establishment of ASEAN free trade areas with China, Japan, South Korea, India, Australia and New Zealand as scheduled.
"It is time for East Asian economies to make resolutions to continue stepping up their international and regional economic integration, facilitating trade globalisation, fighting trade protectionism and playing an active role in pushing the Doha negotiation to completion," said Dung.
He said the promotion of infrastructure links and the facilitation of trade, investment and travel for people in the region should be priorities in the process of establishing the East Asia Community.
The Vietnamese leader also called for joint co-operation to counter challenges such as climate change, energy and food shortages, environmental degradation, natural calamities and outbreaks of diseases.
In combating climate change, Dung said East Asian countries and ASEAN in particular should be at the forefront of regional and global endeavours.
He proposed the establishment of an East Asia Forum on Climate Change to lay out measures for co-ordinating joint actions in the region and to contribute to the formation of a global co-operation framework to deal with the enormous challenge of global warning.
Dung called for the boosting of cultural, tourist and academic exchange programmes as well as education co-operation to create more mutual trust and understanding between people while raising community awareness on cultures in the region and the need to preserve regional identities.
The leader said he shared the views of other leaders that today, a peaceful, stable, prosperous and advanced East Asia Community was gradually coming into reality.
Leaders at the meeting agreed that since 1997, regional co-operation and integration had been sped up through various mechanisms initiated by ASEAN for the building of the EAC, reaping a series of important fruits in a wide range of fields.
They named economic co-operation and integration as the leading area providing an adhesive and important material precondition for the EAC building process.
Leaders stressed the need to bolster infrastructure links between economies, describing it as an important task in the path towards an East Asian Community.
ASEAN is working on a master plan to link all land, rail, sea and air routes, telecommunication networks and software infrastructure among its members while also expanding links to East Asia.
Participants at the meeting expressed hopes for East Asia to be a well integrated region, with ASEAN playing the cornerstone, during the next two to three decades.
Food security
During discussions on global food security on Friday, Prime Minister Dung said food security was a global issue of particular concern when more than 1 billion people throughout the world are facing hunger.
"World demand for food is forecast to almost double by 2050 with 9 billion people needing to be fed," said Dung.
He spoke highly of the efforts of many countries and international organisations, especially UN bodies such as the Food and Agriculture Organisation (FAO), in supporting agricultural development and ensuring national and world food security during the recent past.
However, he added that progress in ensuring food security remained tardy and unstable, and now was time for the international community to seek new ways of ensuring food security for the world in a faster and more sustainable manner.
While sharing the experiences of Viet Nam, which once suffered food shortage for decades but has now become one of the world's leading rice exporters, the leader said that, to ensure food security, each country needs to maintain a certain farmland acreage for food crops and boost investment to increase yields and quality of foods.
Nations should also create favourable conditions for trading of agricultural products, building a stable food distribution system, and generating jobs and income as well as accelerating access to foods for people, said Dung.
He said Viet Nam was ready to share its knowledge and experiences in food security with other countries and the international community through bilateral and multilateral co-operation programmes, especially through the UN Food and Agriculture Organisation's South-South Co-operation Programme for Food Security.
"Viet Nam is one of the countries forecast to be hardest hit by climate change, particularly the rising sea level, but is a country that annually provides one-fifth of the world's total rice exports, "he said.
Dung said he therefore called for international support for Viet Nam to cope with climate change, firstly in implementing the agricultural sector's action plan on adapting to climate change during the 2008-20 period.
Also at the session, he and other leaders proposed a reshuffle, functional expansion and empowerment of the UN's Food and Agriculture Organisation. The leaders emphasised that the international community should commit to eliminating and minimising tariff and non-tariff barriers on food and agricultural products.
On Friday evening, Dung met with WEF president Klaus Schwab in Davos.
On the sidelines of the WEF on Saturday, he met with the Duke of York, Prince Andrew, who has made several visits to Viet Nam.
Dung asked Prince Andrew, as a senior representative in trade and international investment of the British Government, to continue supporting Viet Nam and encouraging British business people to invest in Viet Nam.
Dung said he hoped the UK trade representative would work to help Vietnamese businesses and their commodities enter the UK market and the EU, thus increasing two-way trade value between the two countries to $3 billion and the UK's investment in Viet Nam to US$3 billion in the coming years.
Prince Andrew discussed ways and means to increase bilateral co-operation in trade and investment and suggested the two countries' relevant ministries and agencies discuss co-operation in education, including the setting up of an UK university in Viet Nam.
Source: http://vietnamnews.vnagency.com.vn/Economy/196461/ASEAN-vital-in-East-Asia-Community-PM.html
Email from: Ms. Wahyuningrum (Yuyun)
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When: 7/2/2014
