With outstanding
growth over the past 15 years, the Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) had proven its
strong vitality and become an irreplaceable bridge in the Asia-Europe
partnership, said Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Pham Gia
Khiem.

Hungarian Prime Minister Viktor Orban (second right) addresses the opening session of the 10th ASEM Foreign Ministers Meeting in Godollo, Hungary. Deputy Prime Minister Pham Gia Khiem (second left) attends the two-day meeting. — XINHUA/VNS Photo

Addressing the
10th ASEM Foreign Ministers Meeting in Godollo, Hungary, on Monday, Khiem said
ASEM co-operation had been expanded to various fields and ASEM was affirming its
international position through its active involvement in settling pressing
global issues

With Russia,
Australia and New Zealand as its three newest members, ASEM now represented
around 60 per cent of the world’s population and contributed more than half of
the world’s GDP, he added.

The meeting themed
“Working Together on Non-Traditional Security Challenges” had a practical focus,
with discussion surrounding issues of top concern to each ASEM member and the
two continents.

In a globalised
world, the challenges were not separated by country but became transnational,
which had an impact on security and development on the two continents in an
increasing scale and intensity, Khiem said.

Current reality
required the two sides to develop a comprehensive viewpoint and quick and
drastic actions at national, regional, inter-regional and global levels, he
stressed.

Since the 9th ASEM
FMM two years ago, enhancing international and interregional co-operation in
implementing domestic economic reform and global economic governance
restructuring had continuously been a priority of many ASEM members, Khiem said.
However, non-traditional security challenges had deep influences on efforts to
recover economies and ensure social security in many countries and
regions.

Khiem said to
recover the world economy and ensure sustainable growth, the two continents
needed to join hands more closely to satisfactorily deal with not only economic
and social issues but also emerging non-traditional security
challenges.

He expressed his
belief that the meeting would create new driving forces and orientations for
common awareness and co-ordination in policies and towards the common goal of
building a new Asia-Europe partnership, deepening the understanding between the
people of the two regions and establishing strong dialogues among equal
partners.

Discussions during
the two-day meeting touched on regional issues, non-traditional security
challenges, global issues, post crisis economic recovery, the implementation of
the results of the Eighth ASEM Summit and preparations for the ninth ASEM Summit
slated for 2012 in Vientiane, Laos.

In conjunction
with the 10th ASEM FMM, the sixth Asia-Europe Journalists Seminar was held, in
which participants reaffirmed the important role the media could play in
increasing public awareness to collectively address the long-term challenges of
climate change.

Participants
suggested climate change stories should be more connected to locally relevant
issues and journalists should aim to balance stories about the negative impacts
of climate change and those highlighting positive opportunities presented by the
global challenge.

More efforts must
be made to increase understanding of the actual processes of climate change
negotiations so that the public could better understand what was occurring
behind the scenes of a sometimes obtuse process, they agreed.

VietNamNet/Viet
Nam News