The meeting aims to promote exchanges and relations between East Asian and Latin American countries.

The Vietnamese delegation is led by Foreign Minister Pham Gia Khiem, who will deliver a speech at the meeting.

Speaking at the opening, Japanese Prime Minister, Yukio Hatoyama, highlighted the importance of strengthening cooperation between the two regions to cope with the current global challenges, and expressed his hope that the meeting would achieve success as expected and help countries from both continents gain a better mutual understanding.

In his speech, Foreign Minister Khiem affirmed that Vietnam supports FEALAC’s initiatives aimed at improving the forum’s organisation and operational mechanisms, increasing the feasibility of its programmes and cooperative projects and ensuring capital resources for carrying out these programmes and projects.

East Asia and Latin America are two dynamic developing regions that offer great potential for cooperation. This provides a good foundation for all parties to step up the development of FEALAC to make the forum’s operations more effective and substantial and meet the aspirations and interests of all its members.

On the sidelines of the meeting, the same day, Mr Khiem held talks with the Argentinian Foreign Minister on issues of mutual concern including the promotion of bilateral cooperation.