- Established in 1994, the ASEAN Regional Forum (ARF) is an annual gathering of foreign ministers of countries in Southeast Asia and Pacific. ARF was initiated as part of an attempt to separate discussions on political and security issues of Post-Ministerial Conferences (PMC), a mechanism in which ASEAN engages with its dialogue partners, from discussions on other issues, in order to facilitate more in-depth discussions and concrete outcomes on issues relating to the region’s security.
- At present, ARF comprises 26 countries and 1 organization: the 10 ASEAN Member States, the 10 ASEAN Dialogue Partners (Australia, Canada, China, the EU, India, Japan, New Zealand, ROK, Russia and the United States), and 7 other countries in the Asia and Pacific region (Democratic People’s Republic of Korea, Pakistan, Timor-Leste, Mongolia, Bangladesh and Papua New Guinea). It is noteworthy that all major countries with leading international roles, whether as permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, or participants in the Six-Party Talks on the situation in the Korean Peninsula, are represented in the ARF.
- In this upcoming ARF, besides the discussion on following-up on and review of ARF activities in the past year, other main topics of discussion are expected to include the future direction of the ARF. The participating Foreign Ministers are expected to adopt a number of documents including the ARF Vision Statement, the ARF Work Plan on Counter Terrorism and Transnational Crime 2009-2010 and ARF Work Plan on Disaster Relief 2009 -2011.
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
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