Addressing the 41st ASEAN Ministerial Meeting in Singapore on July 20, Mr Khiem said that ASEAN is entering a new and important stage of development, giving top priority to putting the ASEAN Charter into action and ensuring the successful construction of a three pillar-based ASEAN Community by 2015.
The group needs to enhance its unity and raise the effectiveness of its cooperation to foster regional integration, said Mr Khiem.
He said that narrowing development gap is a condition for the group to achieve regional integration and build the ASEAN community and it will continue to be given a high priority in the group’s inner cooperation and its cooperation with outside partners.
The Vietnamese leader said that ASEAN should concentrate on building the second phase of an Initiative ASEAN Integration (IAI) working plan on narrowing the development gap to fit the group’s new priority areas and requirements in addition to increasing implementation effectiveness and integrating the issue into resource mobilisation strategy.
ASEAN Foreign Ministers passed a communiqué reaffirming the importance of narrowing the development gap in the region. They agreed to further intensify integration efforts in all three pillars of the ASEAN community to establish a people-oriented, caring and sharing region by 2015.
“We affirmed our resolve to pursue more regional-wide cooperation programmes and activities geared towards accelerating the ASEAN community-building process,” said the communiqué.
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