Foreign minister highlights significance of Viet Nam's messages at 42nd ASEAN Summit

The trip to Indonesia by Prime Minister Pham Minh Chinh and his entourage to attend the 42nd ASEAN Summit and related meetings from May 9 to 11 was successful, during which Viet Nam put forward proposals to promote the self-reliance of ASEAN and unlock resources for the development of the ASEAN Community, Minister Bui Thanh Son said to the press. 

First, the Prime Minister strongly asserted that solidarity, unity, independence, self-reliance, and the centrality of ASEAN serve as the fundamental values making the bloc’s success. 

He stressed the need for ASEAN to maintain its strategic balance in its relations with partners, especially superpowers. 

Second, the Prime Minister highlighted that promoting regional institutional, infrastructure, and people-to-people connectivity to remove bottlenecks and tap into development potential forms the three strategic breakthroughs for creating stronger development momentum for ASEAN in the coming decades.

Amid numerous latent risks and uncertainties in the global economy, to foster sustainable recovery and development, he recommended member countries expand the intra-bloc market, step up negotiations to upgrade the ASEAN Trade in Goods Agreement, comprehensively and strongly implement regional connectivity projects, and make substantive improvements for the investment, business, and tourism environment.

He also called for more attention to augmenting ties in developing digital economies, digital governments, and circular economies, connecting the grids of member countries, developing renewable energy, soon devising long-term strategies for training high-quality human resources, and improving the implementation of the agreement on the mutual recognition in labor of some professions in ASEAN.

Third, Pham held that ASEAN should enhance efforts to narrow the development gap, especially in remote areas and sub-regions. Sub-regional cooperation should be connected with common cooperation programs of the ASEAN Community in all fields in order to open a wider development space and ensure a better life for all, according to Foreign Minister Bui.

At the summit, Prime Minister Pham and other regional leaders also had in-depth discussions on regional and international issues and reaffirmed ASEAN’s principled stance.

He underlined that protecting peace, stability, security, and freedom of navigation and overflight in the East Sea is both an interest and a responsibility of all countries. He asked for the full and effective implementation of the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the East Sea (DOC), as well as efforts to achieve a substantive and effective code of conduct (COC) in line with international law and the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).

The Vietnamese Prime Minister also met with other ASEAN leaders to review the implementation of bilateral agreements and discuss ways to further strengthen cooperation in economy, trade, investment, security - defense, culture, education, and people-to-people exchange in a more result-oriented and fruitful fashion./.