(VOVworld) - The 49th ASEAN Foreign Ministers’ Meeting (AMM 49) took place in Laos’s capital city Vientiane on Sunday.

Participants at the opening ceremony. (Photo: Pham Kien– VNA’s correspondent in Laos)

The Vietnamese delegation was led by Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Pham Binh Minh.

Themed “Turning Vision into Reality for a Dynamic ASEAN Community”, participants discussed measures to strengthen the solidarity, unity, and central role of ASEAN, implement ASEAN’s Community Vision 2025, improve ASEAN’s effectiveness, and boost cooperation between ASEAN and its partners.

ASEAN members pledged continued efforts toward ASEAN’s Community Vision 2025 and master plans toward a more close-knit and people-centered ASEAN Community.

Praising ASEAN’s Community Vision 2025 and the UN 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development, the ministers agreed to prioritise sectors and find ways to boost similar components in those two documents.

They discussed regional and global issues of common concern, including the Korean peninsula, the Middle East, the East Sea, and emerging challenges such as terrorism, human trafficking, migration, trans-national crime, maritime security, climate change, and natural disasters.

They devoted considerable time to the East Sea issue, affirming the East Sea’s importance to regional peace, stability, and cooperation, and continued to express concern about recent developments in the East Sea. They reiterated their consistent stance on the peaceful settlement of disputes in line with international law, and called for self-restraint and refraining from the use of or threat to use force, non-militarisation, preventing actions that complicate the situation and increase tension, towards achieving practical progress in the implementation of the DOC and the building of a Code of Conduct in the East Sea.

Vietnam’s Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Pham Binh Minh underlined the importance of ensuring ASEAN’s solidarity, unity, central role, and sense of the community, and the harmonious combination of national interests and those of ASEAN.

He reiterated ASEAN’s important role in promoting peace, stability, and cooperation between countries in the region, creating a favourable environment for countries to peacefully resolve disputes in line with international law and the 1982 United National Convention on the Law of the Sea.

On Monday, ten ASEAN+1 meetings with partners, China, Japan, the Republic of Korea, the US, India, Australia, New Zealand, Russia, the European Union, and Canada will be held.