Your Majesty,
Mr. Chairman,
Distinguished Colleagues,
I wish to thank H.E. President Yudhoyono of Indonesia, the ASEAN Chair, for his hospitality and to commend Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung of Viet Nam for chairing ASEAN successfully last year.
I also wish to thank the Secretary-General of ASEAN for his report which outlines the road ahead for building an ASEAN Community.
Building Our ASEAN Community
With regard to implementation of the Blueprints, promoting good governance and transparency as a cross-cutting issue within all three pillars of the ASEAN Community should be an important priority. So is mainstreaming the promotion and protection of human rights in all of ASEAN’s programmes and activities.
One area which I wish to highlight is the need to develop effective region-wide humanitarian assistance and disaster relief (HADR) arrangements which build on networking between HADR centres in the region. We thus support the full operationalization of the ASEAN Humanitarian Assistance (AHA) Centre in Jakarta which would be complemented by the WFP Humanitarian Response Depot in Subang and the Utapao airport facilities in Thailand which are offering to support rapid deployment of assets in response to an HADR emergency.
We call for strengthening the ASEAN Secretary-General’s role as humanitarian assistance coordinator and ASEAN’s development of effective civil-military partnerships based on cooperation with civil society organizations. In this connection, I commend ASEAN Defense Ministers for launching an effective partnership with CSOs in the area of disaster management.
I am also pleased to inform you that the Asian Disaster Preparedness Centre (ADPC) in Thailand would be prepared to work with interested partners in undertaking a regional stocktake of HADR facilities and assets in the region, to give ASEAN a better picture of the region’s capabilities.
We also support efforts to combat trafficking in persons by developing an ASEAN Convention on this issue. With regard to nuclear safety, we support enhanced information sharing and transparency amongst nuclear regulatory agencies in ASEAN, particularly on the development of nuclear energy. We hope that IAEA standards will be applied in our region in order to enhance nuclear safety.
As a number of colleagues have mentioned, we are living in volatile times with global economic challenges including food and energy security challenges. We need to be monitoring these economic challenges and trends. It would thus be important for ASEAN to coordinate more closely with regard to monitoring and early warning of these challenges.
To facilitate movements of business people throughout the region, we should develop an ASEAN Business Travel Card in tandem with ASEAN Lanes in all major international airports throughout the region.
We should seek to work with our media friends in helping realize a Community of Peoples. We could make greater use of ASEAN TV Channel which Thailand set up during our Chairmanship in 2009 as mechanism to promote education.
3Cs for ASEAN: Credibility, Centrality and Connectivity
For ASEAN to enjoy continued success as a regional organization, I am of the view that it must pursue what I would like to call a “3Cs” strategy namely, credibility, centrality and connectivity.
On ASEAN connectivity:
It is imperative that ASEAN’s priority this year be the full implementation of the Master Plan on ASEAN Connectivity, following on the “Community of Connectivity” idea launched in 2009. In Thailand’s view, this involves the following components:
First, we need to instruct all our sectoral bodies to undertake the necessary measures to support implementation of the Master Plan. In this connection, cross-border management issues are critical.
Second, we look forward to the quick finalization of the ASEAN Infrastructure Fund.
Third, we need to work with our Dialogue Partners to pursue connectivity. For example, China could focus on funding North-South Economic Corridor links, Japan on East-West, the E.U. on cross-border management capacity-building, and the U.S. on water management and maritime transport.
Fourth, we need to develop synergies amongst the actions undertaken by various regional and sub-regional frameworks on connectivity, particularly as connectivity is expected to be a key issue in the expanded East Asia Summit (EAS).
Fifth, we should be thinking about a Connectivity Master Plan “Plus” which would explore connectivity beyond ASEAN, focusing on Northeast Asia, South Asia and other regions. Indeed, a lot of groundwork has already been done. There was a successful Road Trip from Thailand through Laos to southern China earlier this year and a possible Road Trip to northeastern India in the future.
On ASEAN centrality:
ASEAN must continue to play a central role in the region. We must continue to develop an ASEAN-centered regional architecture. This involves strengthening of ASEAN institutions. We also support feasible and effective measures to strengthen the capacities of the ASEAN Secretariat, including finances and personnel, so that ASEAN can pursue effectively a strategy for Community-building by 2015.
On ASEAN credibility:
ASEAN must enhance its credibility by fully implementing its own agreements, the Blueprints and the Charter. To be credible, we must also be able to address and resolve challenges within our region. In sum, we must have political will to fulfill our commitments and to overcome our challenges.
For further information, please contact the Press Division, Department of Information, Ministry of Foreign Affairs, Tel.02-6435170, Fax.02-6435169, E-mail: div0704@mfa.go.th