VietNamNet Bridge – 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.

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