On 16 August 2010, Mr. Kasit Piromya, Minister of Foreign Affairs, attended the 4th ASEAN Socio-Cultural Community Council (ASCC) Meeting at Furama Resort Hotel in Da Nang, Socialist Republic of Viet Nam. Prior to the meeting, the Thai Foreign Minister together with other Heads of Delegations of ASEAN Member Countries also paid a courtesy call on Mr. Nguyen Tan Dung, Prime Minister of Vietnam. Gist as follows:
1. The Meeting adopted two documents, to be presented for consideration by the ASEAN Leaders during the 17th ASEAN Summit in October 2010, namely 1) Draft ASEAN Leaders’ Statement on Human Resources and Skills Development for Economic Recovery and Sustainable Growth covering technical cooperation in ASEAN, trilateral cooperation and cooperation between public and private sectors, skill development for labours, and promotion of lifelong learning process, and 2) Draft Hanoi Declaration on the Enhancement of Welfare and Development of ASEAN Women and Children.
2. The Meeting agreed in principle to the “Draft ASEAN Declaration on Cooperation in Statistics” and took note of the latest status of the “Agreement on Cultural Cooperation between the Governments of the ASEAN Member States and the Government of the Russian Federation.” Both documents would be presented for consideration by the ASEAN Leaders during the 17th ASEAN Summit. Moreover, the ASCC Meeting also considered matters related to people-to-people connectivity (i.e. culture, education and tourism), as well as physical and institutional connectivity in order to improve the master plan on ASEAN Connectivity.
3. As head of the Thai delegation, Foreign Minister Kasit emphasized the importance of the issues of culture and education which play significant role in “ASEAN Community” building, and encouraged all ASEAN Member Countries to promote the “ASEAN awareness.” The said two matters are the basic foundation to the “ASEAN Community” building. He also invited ASEAN Member Countries to make full use of ASEAN TV, which is a satellite television channel established by Thailand during the 15th ASEAN Summit in 2009, by providing their television programmes to the channel.
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