At the 30th ASEAN – Australia Forum held in Canberra, Australia from May 22-23, Dung  emphasized the importance of connectivity within ASEAN, between ASEAN and other regions, and the significance of the Greater Mekong Sub-region (GMS)’s strategy to ASEAN development.

He expressed his hope that the regional bloc and Australia will boost their effective collaboration in ASEAN-chaired frameworks and forums towards shaping an open, transparent and rules-based regional architecture. 

He shared the regional grouping’s priority orientations and incentivized the Australian government and businesses to help ASEAN strengthen hard and soft infrastructure connectivity in the region and the GMS and reiterated ASEAN’s consistent stance on the East Sea issue that was reaffirmed by their leaders during the 32nd ASEAN Summit. 

Dung said he hopes that Australia will continue enhancing its active role and make constructive and responsible contributions to dealing with challenges to regional peace and stability.

Australia affirmed ASEAN’s importance in its external policy and backed the bloc’s central role in building an open, transparent and rules-based regional architecture. The country desired to continue boosting economic connectivity and openness in the region. 

Regarding rapid and unforeseeable developments in the region, Australian officials said ASEAN plays an important role as a strategic organiser in forums and mechanisms for the sake of regional peace, security and stability. 

Australia pledged his active participation and contributions to mechanisms such as the East Asia Summit, the ASEAN Regional Forum, and the ASEAN Defence Ministers’ Meeting Plus, voiced support for ASEAN’s 2018 theme of facilitating self-resilience and innovation, including building smart cities. 

Regarding recent militarisation in the East Sea, both sides emphasized the importance of maintaining peace, security, stability, peaceful settlement of issues in line with international law, promoting dialogues and confidence building in order to reach an effective and legally-binding Code of Conduct in the East Sea (COC). 

They also discussed issues related to the Korean Peninsula, Rakhine state in Myanmar and other trans-national security challenges. 

They concurred to augment collaboration across the pillars of politics-security, economy-trade-investment, socio-culture and people-to-people exchange. 

The two sides agreed to take on joint work covering trade, investment, connectivity, infrastructure, creativity and innovation, education-training, gender equality, terrorism and violent extremism prevention, cyber security, trans-national crimes and marine cooperation.

They will finalize negotiations on the Regional Comprehensive Economic Partnership (RCEP) and ratify the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement on Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP).

The two sides will define a raft of initiatives such as ASEAN-Australia infrastructure and GMS development, maritime cooperation, business connectivity via the ASEAN-Australia Chamber of Commerce and the ASEAN-Australia Business Council. 

Source: vov.vn