ASEAN countries meet to improve cooperation, advance security

Conventions

ASEAN countries meet to improve cooperation, advance security1

Three days of ASEAN and related meetings have wrapped up in Laos’ capital Vientiane, with foreign ministers from a total of 27 countries gathering Tuesday for a major security summit.

CCTV’s Rian Maelzer reported from Vientiane.
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East Asian ministers met with their ASEAN counterparts to look for new areas of cooperation and to deepen integration. And while issues like the South China Sea dispute and tensions in the Korean peninsula continued to be a cause for concern, ministers also looked to take away positives from the gathering.

At the earlier meeting, both China’s foreign minister Wang Yi and U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry noted they had areas of disagreement, but there were also several areas of increasing cooperation including nuclear non-proliferation, combating terrorism and climate change.

“We have come to realize the importance of cooperation among Eastern and South Eastern Asian nations as well as its positive influence to the world,” Wang said. “We all reaffirm our willingness to build an Eastern and South Eastern Asian Economic Community. China, South Korea and Japan will continue to support the ASEAN to lead the process of building an economic bloc. I think today’s meeting was successful.”

At the East Asia Summit, the 18 countries vowed to deepen cooperation in areas such as finance, energy, environment and disaster management, as well as discussing key regional and international concerns.

The meetings’ goal is to encourage confidence building and preventive diplomacy, both very much needed to help ensure tensions in the South China Sea and Korean peninsula don’t boil over.