19 November 2011
6th East-Asia Summit Plenary Session | 6th East-Asia Summit Retreat Session
Remarks at the 6th East Asia Summit (Plenary Session)
Topic: “Review and Future Direction of East Asia Summit”
Bali, 19th November 2011
(11:40 – 13:00)
- Excellency Chairman,
- Your Majesty the Sultan,
-Your Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen!
First of all, I would like to express sincere thanks to
the EAS member countries for the benevolent humanitarian aid provided
to Cambodian people suffering from the recent flooding. I would like to
join the ASEAN Leaders in extending a warm welcome to H.E Barack Obama, the President of the United States of America and H.E Dmitry Medvedev, the
President of the Russian Federation, who participate for the first
time in the East Asia Summit. Cambodia is of the view that the
participation of the US and the Russian Federation would further
enhance mutual trust and friendship among countries in the region,
thereby contributing to peace, stability and prosperity in the region
and the world. At the same time, the presence of the two Countries will
make the EAS an integral part of the evolving regional architecture
and gain more weight in the international arena.
Although the global economic and financial crisis has
passed, the recent uncertainty including the sluggish growth of the US
economy, the debt crisis in Europe, the political unrest and conflicts
in Middle East and North Africa, coupled with the issue of food and
energy price hikes as well as natural disasters in some countries in
the region have posed common challenges for East Asian countries. In
this context, I think that further strengthening and deepening East
Asia cooperation and integration is the best way for all of us to
jointly address challenges.
In this spirit, Cambodia supports the institutionalization
of the annual meeting of the EAS Foreign Ministers and EAS Senior
Official Meetings. At the same time, I am very pleased that “ASEAN Connectivity”
has been added as a key priority area to the existing five priority
areas of cooperation, namely energy, finance, disaster management,
education and avian flu prevention. However, I am of the view that we
need to have a concrete work program to implement all these priority
areas. ASEAN warmly welcome financial contribution as well as technical
assistance from the EAS members for the implementation of the Master
Plan on ASEAN Connectivity and the ASEAN Infrastructure Strategic Plan
2011-2015, which is crucial for narrowing development gaps within ASEAN
and constitutes a stepping stone toward East Asian integration in the
longer term.
For the above reasons, Cambodia would like to support all
initiatives to create the East Asia Free Trade Area and Comprehensive
Economic Partnership in East Asia. But this needs to be progressed
gradually through the negotiation on the establishment of ASEAN Plus
Plus FTA. In this process, given the special conditions of some ASEAN
member countries with lower level of development, such as Cambodia, I
would like to request our partner countries to consider providing more
assistance to these countries, including financial and technical
assistance, as well as to provide more preferential rules of origin
than the one extended to other partners involving in the establishment
of the ASEAN Plus Plus FTA. The provision of more preferential rules of
origin than the normal one, similar to those that the EU and Canada
are currently granted to Cambodia, will attract more investments to the
less developed countries, thus creating jobs, generating incomes,
reducing poverty and development gap in ASEAN and between ASEAN and
other dialogue partners.
Thank you for your attention!
Remarks at the 6th East Asia Summit (Retreat)
Topic: “Exchange of Views on Regional and International Issues”
Bali, 19th November 2011
(13:55 – 15:15)
- Excellency Chairman,
- Your Majesty the Sultan,
- Your Excellencies, Ladies and Gentlemen!
For this session of the Summit, may now I share with you all some of my views related to our agenda as follows:
I agree with the view that disaster management is a top
priority for our region at this critical juncture. Indeed, the recent
natural disasters in the region have posed serious challenges that we
have to overcome. The natural disasters have not only undermined the
social-economic achievements of the affected countries and created more
vulnerability for the poor, who are now working very hard to recover
their livelihood from the negative impacts of the global economic
crisis, but also slow down regional economic growth in the short to
medium term. This requires stronger regional cooperation with the view
to adopting concrete and urgent measures at national, regional, and
international levels to establish an effective early warning system and
responsive mechanism to minimize its impacts and prevent the loss of
human lives.
In this spirit, the “2009 Cha-am Hua Hin Statement on EAS Disaster Management”
should be considered as an excellent mechanism to be built upon to
further expand our cooperation in the East Asia region. At the same
time, Cambodia would like to encourage the EAS member states to
participate in the “ASEAN Agreement on Disaster Management and Emergency Response (AADMER) Work Program 2010-2015”. In addition, I would like to urge all partners to support the recently established “ASEAN Coordinating Center for Humanitarian Assistance on Disaster Management-AHA Center”in order address natural disasters in the region.
Cambodia commends Indonesia and Australia for initiating the paper on “A Practical Approach to Enhance Regional Cooperation on Disaster Rapid Response”.
Cambodia also welcomes Japan’s proposal to hold an international
conference in 2012 to share her experiences and lessons learned from
the Great Earthquake happened in the eastern part of Japan, as well as
to host the World Conference on Disaster Reduction in 2015.
Meanwhile, we have to recognize that disaster management is
certainly linked to development and environment. Under these
circumstances, I think that development should take into serious
consideration the benefits of all riparian countries, both the upstream
and downstream countries, as well as the coastal States.
The following paragraph is prepared for the
discussion of South China Sea Issue in a case that there is a need to
discuss the issue.
{Regarding regional security issue,
Cambodia is of the view that the Summit should focus on non-traditional
security issues, which is our common concern in the region such as
human and illicit arm trafficking, money laundering, piracy etc.
Concerning South China Sea issue, Cambodia highly appreciates the
adoption of the guideline of Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in
the South China Sea (DOC) and encourage full implementation of the
guideline in order to seek a peaceful solution to issues in the South
China Sea, based on international law and the UN Convention on the Law
of the Sea (UNCLOS)}
Thank you for your attention!
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