Culture plays an important role in ASEAN Community’s development
Deputy PM Pham Binh Minh addresses the meeting (Photo:VGP) |
(VOVworld)- The 6th Meeting of ASEAN Ministers Responsible for Culture and Arts opened in the central city of Hue on Saturday. Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Pham Binh Minh, ASEAN Secretary General Le Luong Minh, Culture Ministers and heads of ASEAN and Japanese delegations attended the event. In his address, Deputy Prime Minister Minh highlighted the important role of the socio-cultural pillar in ASEAN’s common success. He said through cultural cooperation mechanisms, strategies on culture and arts have been promoted to preserve and honor ASEAN cultural heritages and increase people’s understanding about ASEAN’s diverse and special culture. Mr. Minh said:“Mentioning culture’s role in ASEAN Community’s sustainable development aims at promoting the role of intellectuality, science, technology and art genres in improving people’s material and spiritual lives. By so doing, ASEAN community will become special in terms of culture and united in terms of diversity and also a community of development and prosperity. This will create a foundation to promote ASEAN identity, ASEAN spirit and ASEAN unity”.
The Deputy Prime Minister stressed that the meeting should focus on initiatives to promote ASEAN identity, development strategies of arts and culture between ASEAN countries in the post 2015 and measures to boost cultural and arts cooperation between ASEAN and its dialogue partners.
On this occasion, Singapore Minister of Culture, Community and Youths Wong Shuyn Tsai Lawrence presented the certificate and the logo “ASEAN Culture City” for Thua Thien Hue province. Nguyen Van Cao is Chairman of Thua Thien-Hue Provincial People’s Committee: “We promise to continue bringing into play our achievements to promote an image of an ASEAN Community of peace, civilization, happy people and comprehensive development. Thua Thien-Hue authorities and people really hope that ASEAN member countries and international friends would continue supporting us to make Hue a venue of cultural exchanges thus promoting the preservation and promotion of cultural values and heritages”.
This is the first time that Vietnam hosted the event. It created an opportunity for ASEAN countries to map out future cooperative orientations to achieve the target of establishing an ASEAN Community by 2015.