ASEAN, New Zealand cooperate for people’s benefit
An ASEAN-New Zealand Summit to celebrate the 35th anniversary of their diplomatic ties was held in Hanoi under the chairmanship of Vietnam’s Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung in the presence of New Zealand Prime Minister John Key and ASEAN leaders.
Malaysia’s Prime Minister Najib Razak, as the meeting’s coordinator, reviewed the progress of the ASEAN-New Zealand relationship. He highlighted significant achievements, especially the ASEAN – New Zealand Cooperative Framework for the 2006-2010 period and the ASEAN-Australia-New Zealand Free Trade Agreement (AANZFTA), which was put into force this year.
This agreement is one of the most comprehensive cooperative one signed between ASEAN and its partner, said Mr. Razak.
ASEAN leaders highly appreciated New Zealand’s support over the past 35 years, including the implementation of the ASEAN Charter.
New Zealand reaffirmed its support of ASEAN’s plans for the Roadmap for an ASEAN Community and will discuss ways of contributing to the bloc within the framework of the Joint Declaration on ASEAN-New Zealand Comprehensive Partnership. New Zealand also spoke highly of ASEAN’s emerging role in the international arena and agreed to support the bloc at the G20 Summit.
Both sides agreed on developing an open, transparent and comprehensive regional architecture, in which ASEAN will play an important role to promote economic development, peace, stability and socio-cultural cooperation in the region.
They said they will promote cooperation in regional forums such as the East Asia Summit (EAS), the ASEAN-Closer Economic Region (CER), the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF), the ASEAN Defense Ministers’ Meeting Plus (ADMM+) and the Asia-Europe forum (ASEM).
The two sides also emphasised they should make greater efforts to cooperate in prioritised areas such as economics and trade, education, tourism, culture and people-to-people exchanges to improve mutual understanding, promote closer cooperation, and deal with global challenges more effectively.