In an interview with Vietnamese reporters, PM Nguyễn Tấn Dũng pointed out some major results as follows:

Firstly, ASEAN leaders agreed to approve and sign the ASEAN Charter, one of very important documents as the legal and institutional frame for the ASEAN cooperation in the future, facilitating the advance to an ASEAN Community as well as raising the Association’s position in the relations with partners and regional processes.

Secondly, the ASEAN Summit ratified the Draft to boost the construction of the ASEAN Economic Community (AEC) and signed the Declaration on the AEC Draft, confirming the determination to build up an economic community through specific plans, roadmaps and solutions.

Thirdly, the summits focused on discussing global issues such as energy, environment, climatic changes and sustainable development, and put forth orientations and measures to strengthen the cooperation within ASEAN as well as with dialogue partners.

Fourthly, during the summits with dialogue partners and the 3 rd East Asia Summit (EAS), the leaders spent a lot of time to discuss the ways to cement and deepen the multifaceted cooperation between ASEAN and its dialogue partners through speeding up and fruitfully realizing agreements on partnership and comprehensive cooperation, especially in trade-economy and development cooperation, by signing agreements on free trade areas (FTA) between ASEAN and the dialogue partners.

PM Dũng stressed Việt Nam’s proactive contributions to the major activities during the Summits and to the maintenance of ASEAN’s solidarity, unity and fundamental principles. “At the summits, the Vietnamese delegation urged to accelerate the realization of programs to narrow development gaps through setting up the initiatives of ASEAN integration (IAI), the Special Fund, cooperative programs in order to engage all members in the regional integration,” said the PM.

At the EAS, the Vietnamese delegation raised the initiative to hold the East Asia Ministerial Meeting on Environment in late 2008 in Hà Nội.

By Xuân Hồng