|
Addresses at
the 16th ASEAN Summit in Hanoi, Vietnam
[Plenary
Session]; [Working Dinner]; [Retreat]
1. Address at the 16th ASEAN
Summit (Plenary Session)
Topic: Implementation of the
ASEAN Charter
and Roadmap for ASEAN Community
Hanoi, Vietnam, 8 April 2010
(17:45-18:45)
Excellency Chair of the Meeting!
Your Majesty the Sultan,
Your Excellencies, Ladies and
Gentlemen!
On behalf of the Royal Government
and the people of Cambodia, I would like to extend our congratulation to H.E.
Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung on his assumption of the Chairmanship of
this important 16th ASEAN Summit and thank Your Excellency for the
warm hospitality extended to me and my delegation.
May I share
with you, Your Majesty, Excellencies, some of my views related to our agenda as
follows:
1- Implementation of the ASEAN
Charter and Roadmap for ASEAN Community
Moving towards
the ASEAN Community clearly energizes us to work more closely and pro-actively in order to ensure
ASEAN efficiency at this implementation stage. I highly appreciate the signing
of the Protocol to the ASEAN Charter on Dispute Settlement Mechanism and its
attached Rules at this Summit. I am convinced that this Protocol is a stepping
stone for ASEAN to build its capacity in order to settle differences and
disputes in our region as provided for in the ASEAN Charter.
The 2nd IAI Work Plan (2009-2015) is an important roadmap for
narrowing development gaps within ASEAN and moving towards ASEAN Community by
2015. To realize this goal, I would like to propose that, five years from now,
the ASEAN-6 should continue and step up efforts to support CLMV countries under
the 2nd IAI Work Plan in a coordinated and proactive manner. Cambodia
has proposed ten priority areas in IAI Work Plan II. At the same time, I would
like to propose that the scope of the 2nd IAI Work Plan should focus
on both soft infrastructure and physical infrastructure, which will bring direct
benefit to the effort of narrowing development gap. Thus, we have to prepare two
“baskets of priority activities”. The first basket consists of those to be
implemented by ASEAN’s resources. The second is the list of priority projects
to be shared financial contribution from development partners, especially the
plus three countries, as development gap within ASEAN is the key challenge for
East Asia integration where ASEAN is the centrality and the plus three countries
are leading members. Taking this opportunity, I would like to push ASEAN
Secretariat for immediate organization of the 3rd IAI forum in
Jakarta in order to mobilize support and resources from ASEAN Partners.
2- ASEAN Connectivity
ASEAN Connectivity is the heart
for ASEAN to become the centrality of the regional affairs and to leverage its
influence in international arena. The past study shows that there is still 1,093
km of missing links in the CLMV countries. The completion of physical
infrastructure, such as road, rail, air and sea links within ASEAN region which
runs through Cambodia, Laos, Vietnam and Myanmar, is a necessity as the
assessment on this connectivity illustrated that it would bring benefits to all
member states of ASEAN in boosting and facilitating trade, investment, tourism,
education, transportation and logistic services, which are the pre-requisites
for development.
In the context of ASEAN
connectivity, Malaysia has already provided Cambodia with used rails for the
missing link of 48 km (Poipet-Sisophon). Currently, through the continued
rehabilitation and improvement of this railway, we see the need to remove some
more unusable rails. In this regard, I would like to request Malaysia for its
kind consideration to provide another 240,000 m of rail (120 km for each line)
for replacing the old ones that are unusable from Sisophon to Phnom Penh. The
assistance will be a great contribution to the achievement of Singapore-Kunming
Raillink. Taking this opportunity, I would also like to propose other ASEAN
members to look into a possibility to participate in the construction of the
missing railway section of about 257 km, linking Cambodia to Vietnam, which
would costs about 600 million US dollars. Indeed, this section is vital for
realization of Singapore-Kunming Raillink and it will directly contribute to
sustainable growth and prosperity of the region.
I very much appreciate the High Level Task Force on ASEAN
Connectivity in cooperation with ADB and ERIA in developing an ASEAN Master Plan
on Regional Connectivity, a Plan that can ensure synergy among existing
initiatives, with innovative financing mechanism to mobilize funds in addition
to the current available resources.
Explicitly, the success of the
ASEAN connectivity will largely subject to adequate funding for each concrete
project. In this sense, I am encouraged by the progress made under the ASEAN
Infrastructure Financing Mechanism (AIFM). Yet, once again, I would like to
seek your kind attention on the establishment of an ASEAN Infrastructure Fund which can bring the benefits to all members including the less-developed
ASEAN members. This will ensure a full success of the ASEAN Connectivity
initiative.
EndItem
2. Address at the 16th ASEAN
Summit (Working
Dinner)
Topic: Exchange of Views on
Regional and International Issues
Hanoi, Vietnam, 8 April 2010
(19:30-21:30)
Excellency Chair of the Meeting!
Your Majesty the Sultan,
Your Excellencies, Ladies and
Gentlemen!
First of all, I would like to
welcome the finalization of the amendment to the Protocol of Accession to the
Treaty of Amity and Cooperation (TAC) to allow European Union to be able to
become a member of TAC. I believe that the EU’s accession to the TAC, following
the accession of the United States last year, would be a great contribution to
security, peace and stability in South East Asia.
I would like also to highly
appreciate and encourage Myanmar’s efforts in the preparation for a credible,
fair and transparent general election.
Cambodia strongly supports the early finalization of the
Guidelines on the Declaration on the Conducts of Parties in the South China Sea
of 2002 (DOC) in order to further promote mutual trust and confidence among the
claimants in the South China Sea and to maintain peace and stability in the
region.
Regarding the Middle East issue, Cambodia always supports the
Palestinians’ struggle for their right of self-determination in establishing a
Palestine State which exists in harmony with Israel. Cambodia does not want to
see any violence between Israel and Palestine. Cambodia supports peaceful
solution to the conflict in order to bring peace and stability in the region and
the world, and welcomes the positive results of the recent meeting of the Middle
East Quartet, which took place in Moscow.
Cambodia also welcomes the efforts made toward resuming the
six-party talks on denuclearization in the Korean Peninsula which would
strengthen peace and stability in the region.
EndItem
3. Address at the 16th ASEAN Summit (Retreat)
Topics: Regional Architecture, Sustained Recovery and Development, Climate Change and
Other Global Challenges
Hanoi, Vietnam, 9 April 2010
(09:00-11:30)
Excellency Chair of the Meeting!
Your Majesty the Sultan,
Your Excellencies, Ladies and
Gentlemen!
May I share
with you, Your Majesty, Excellencies, some of my views related to our agenda as
follows:
1- Regional Architecture
The
multi-polar setting becomes a dominant trend in the current world. Over the
past, ASEAN has clearly showed its ability to serve as an attractive centrality
of many processes, both at regional and global level, for peace, security,
stability and development. Nevertheless, the ASEAN's challenges in the new
context are to maintain its role as a driving force and attractive centrality of
regional processes, as well as to expand and strengthen its “leveraging” role in
the global arena. The maintaining of this role is very crucial for ASEAN in
setting its future regional architecture. The most important key in this is to
strengthen its advantage and ability through successful efforts to narrow the
development gap within ASEAN and to build a well connected ASEAN community.
In
this sense, the enlargement of ASEAN connectivity into East Asia Region means not just a pre-requisite for the
establishment of Free Trade Area and Comprehensive Economic Partnership in East
Asia, but also a foundation for an establishment of East Asia community in the
long run in which ASEAN is the centrality. In this spirit, ASEAN should be
cautious about regional integration initiatives raised by some partners which
could damage the role of ASEAN centrality in regional affairs. As such, while we
are discussing the approach toward the Comprehensive Economic Partnership
establishment, ASEAN should focus on the implementation of the existing Free
Trade Area agreements and narrowing development gap among countries within the
region.
Moreover, ASEAN should take the current opportunity to contribute inputs to
options of international financial system reform led by G20 countries as
economic recovery and development are closely linked to this important reform.
In this spirit, I am of the view that ASEAN Secretariat and Vietnam as the ASEAN
Chair, should lobby the G20 Summit in the Republic of Korea in the near future
to officially accept the ASEAN Chair as an official member of the G20 Summit.
In
this regard, I would like to reiterate Cambodia’s support for the push for Doha
development negotiation, in WTO framework, to be finished immediately and
successfully.
2-
Sustained Recovery and Development
Once again, I highly appreciate the recent ASEAN+3’s decision to
launch the Chiang Mai Initiative Multilateralization (CMIM) and increase the
size of the SWAP arrangements from US$80 billion to US$120 billion. Actually,
this self-help mechanism could protect the region in the context of current
global financial crisis as well as financial crisis which may reoccur in the
future. So we should finalize the remaining technical issues, so that this
mechanism can be implemented at the soonest.
Although the global recovery remains fragile, we see that Asian
economies recovered from the crisis before the other regions. Asia’s remarkable
recovery explicitly reflects to some extent that currently the regional economy
becomes less dependent on the United States and Europe. Medium-term challenge in
Asia is, however, to promote domestic and regional sources of growth in order to
play a more dynamic role. This requires stronger push and sooner completion of
cooperation and regional economic integration process in accordance with
initiatives and action plans that we have adopted.
3-
Climate Change
This Summit is
timely to provide further guidance to translate the Singapore Declaration
on Climate Change, Energy and the Environment into action plan and
concrete projects for implementation. In this regard, I highly appreciate the
ASEAN Declaration on Joint Response to Climate Change. Cambodia has been
committed to the implementation of the Copenhagen Accord. Cambodia
is piloting a project in the framework of Reducing Emission from
Deforestation and Forest Degradation.
We must give
high priority to climate change mitigation and adaptation in the process toward
a climate-resilient ASEAN Community. I think that ASEAN should have one voice in
encouraging the more developed countries to transfer low-carbon technologies to
least developing countries, thus we can jointly mitigate greenhouse emission
gas. Adaptation funding mechanism is even more important for least developing
countries in addressing challenges resulted from the Climate Change. In this
regard, ASEAN has to explore effective financing instruments and policies for
climate resilience.
EndItem
|