Opening Statement
By
Samdech Akka Moha Sena Padei Techo HUN SEN
Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Cambodia
At the
Prime Minister of the Kingdom of Cambodia
At the
Opening Ceremony of the 20th ASEAN Summit
and the Celebration of the 45th Anniversary of ASEAN
Phnom Penh, Peace Building, 3 April 2012
and the Celebration of the 45th Anniversary of ASEAN
Phnom Penh, Peace Building, 3 April 2012
(09:30-10:30 am)
- Your Majesty the Sultan, Esteemed ASEAN Leaders,
- Excellencies, Ladies, and Gentlemen,
- Distinguished National and International Guests!
On
behalf of the Royal Government and People of Cambodia, I would like to
warmly welcome Your Majesty the Sultan, Excellencies Heads of
State/Government and distinguished delegates of the ASEAN countries to
the 20th ASEAN Summit being held in Phnom
Penh, the capital of the Kingdom of Cambodia. The Royal Government and
people of Cambodia have the great honor to once again host this
important Summit and we would like to extend our hospitality to Your
Majesty, Excellencies, the Leaders of ASEAN as neighbors, friends,
brothers and sisters, who have come to the land of Angkor, Kingdom of
Cambodia, Kingdom of Wonder, which is full of cultural heritages and valuable ancient temples left by our ancestors thousands of years ago.
After achieving peace and unification of territory which resulted from the Royal Government's "Win-Win" policy,
Cambodia became a full member of ASEAN in 1999. This has allowed
Cambodia to integrate with the regional and world economy and play an
active and dynamic role as an equal member with equal rights in both
regional and international forums. Indeed, in 2002, with the support of
the ASEAN countries, Cambodia hosted and successfully chaired the 8th ASEAN
Summit. At this time, Cambodia is greatly honored and proud to assume
the Chairmanship of ASEAN in 2012 with ownership and high responsibility
in order to make contribution towards realizing our common goal which
is the establishment of the ASEAN Community in 2015 as stated in the ASEAN Charter.
The 20th ASEAN Summit coincides with the celebration of the 45th Anniversary of ASEAN. Indeed,
ASEAN has undergone a major transformation since its founding, from a
region wracked by conflict, misery, and poverty to a region of peace,
stability and development. After more than four decades of development,
ASEAN today has become a closely-integrated political and economic
entity, an influential player in Asia and an indispensable strategic
partner of major countries and organizations in the world. Cambodia is
certainly proud of having made positive contribution to ASEAN according
to its capacity and ability in bringing about such progress.
Nevertheless,
along with the success and achievements made so far, ASEAN is facing
some challenges that need to be addressed in order to realize the
objective of "ASEAN: One Community-One Destiny".
Indeed,
uncertain global financial and economic situations, especially the
fragility of the economic recovery of developed countries, coupled with
severe debt crisis in Europe still pose a great threat to the
sustainability of socio-economic development of ASEAN achieved over the
last four decades and the success of our effort towards realizing a full
ASEAN Community. At the same time, the ongoing social and political
turmoil in the Middle East and North Africa remains a threat to global
security and is exerting an upward pressure on the already high oil
prices. In addition to these new uncertainties, the world continues to
be faced with several intransigent issues and challenges, such as food
security, energy, climate change, natural disasters, terrorism,
trans-national crime, and maritime safety, among others.
Within
the region, although the development gap among ASEAN members has been
noticeably narrowed, it is still huge. This requires us to double our
efforts to promote further growth and improve equitable distribution of
the fruits of growth at both national and regional among member
countries. Indeed, narrowing such development gaps is not only a
precondition for ensuring ASEAN competitiveness and reducing poverty of
our people but also for helping ASEAN achieve real regional integration
and promoting its centrality in broader regional and world affairs.
Indeed,
these challenges can hardly be addressed effectively at national level.
This requires a more cooperative and comprehensive approach,
particularly through regional cooperation. I believe ASEAN will be able
to forge a regional consensus on the resolution of outstanding issues.
This belief is based on the experience of more than four decades which
proved that ASEAN has adequate ability to strengthen stability and
security in the region towards achieving inclusive economic growth and
becoming an increasingly "people-centered" community. This is consistent with the selection of our theme "ASEAN: One Community, One Destiny", for
ASEAN in 2012 which highlights the joint determination and cooperation
of the ASEAN people to work in chorus to build the ASEAN Community as a
cohesive family, living in political, security, economic and
socio-cultural harmony, and is rules-based, peaceful and economically
strong.
In
the spirit of making more positive contribution to the effort of ASEAN
Community building, and overcoming all the above mentioned challenges,
as the Chair of ASEAN, I would like to put forward, for the
consideration of all ASEAN Leaders, the "Phnom Penh Agenda" which spells out our priorities for 2012 as follows:
First, in
the context of the continued global financial and economic uncertainty,
ASEAN must pay special attention to strengthening the mechanism for
ensuring financial stability in the region as well as for preventing and
resolving future crises that may occur in the world or the region. In
this mechanism the Chiang Mai Initiative Multilateralization (CMIM)
is the most important instrument. Therefore, we should encourage our
Finance Ministers to work together, and with the partners concerned to
achieve an agreement or concrete commitment of all member countries to
strengthening and doubling the size of the current mechanism from USD
120 billion to USD 240 billion as soon as possible.
Second, we
have to ensure the timely implementation of the Roadmap for ASEAN
Community building (2009-2015), particularly the implementation of all
action plans of the three pillars by accelerating the adoption and the
ratification of the remaining agreements and protocols as soon as
possible. Moreover, we have to pay special attention to narrowing
development gaps among members of ASEAN through reviewing the
implementation of the Initiative for ASEAN Integration Work Plan II
(2009-2015), so that we can identify challenges and lay out additional
measures to accelerate implementation. In this regard, we should select
some projects related to the new members of ASEAN from the Work Plan and
implement them as ASEAN flagship projects immediately in order to
achieve concrete results as soon as possible.
Third, we
should place priority on the establishment of ASEAN Economic Community
by 2015, to transform ASEAN as a single market and production base, with
free flow of goods, services, investment, and skilled labor. Therefore,
we must lay out priority actions and key concrete measures to address
all the challenges and bridge the gaps which are the obstacles for the
realization of ASEAN Economic Community as planned. For this purpose, we
should encourage ASEAN Economic Ministers to closely cooperate with the
"Economic Research Institute for ASEAN and East Asia" in
carrying out a comprehensive study to generate inputs for necessary
measures to be taken to close the implementation gaps including the
strengthening of institutional capacity and coordination, which could
impede the realization of the AEC by 2015.
Fourth, the
connectivity of ASEAN in both physical and institutional infrastructure
is the key for narrowing the development gap and ensuring successful
integration of ASEAN. To achieve this objective we have adopted the "Master Plan on ASEAN Connectivity". We
need to promote the speedy implementation of the Master Plan. For this
purpose, priority should be given to establishing a financing mechanism
which involves: (1) attracting major partners of ASEAN and facilitating
coordination among them for establishing an official mechanism for
realizing this objective, and (2) promoting the expansion of ASEAN
Infrastructure Fund which has been newly established with the support of
ADB, through mobilizing the participation of major partners of ASEAN,
particularly the Plus Three partners. Moreover, we have also to seek
effective means to encourage the participation of the private sector in
implementing this Master Plan.
Fifth, free
flow of skilled labor is the primary characteristic of ASEAN Economic
Community. Even though this goal has not been fully achieved, indeed the
exchange of labor among ASEAN countries has already been robust. This
highlights the need for strengthening cooperation among ASEAN members in
order to protect the rights of migrant workers. ASEAN has already
started working on this issue, but has yet to come to any specific
agreement on implementation. Therefore, we should include this issue as a
priority in our agenda and agree on some concrete measures in 2012 for
implementation.
Sixth, disaster
management has become an important contemporary issue both in the
region and the world. This issue has been highlighted by the episodes of
severe flooding in the ASEAN countries at the end of last year. For the
objective of strengthening disaster management, ASEAN has adopted some
key institutional mechanisms including the establishment of the ASEAN
Coordinating Center for Humanitarian Assistance on Disaster Management
(AHA-Center) last year. However, this mechanism is not fully functional
due to some remaining technical issues that need to be addressed
including the financing problems. Hence, we should consider this as an
urgent priority for promoting the effective functioning of the regional
disaster management mechanism.
Seventh, climate
change and the frequent occurrences of natural disasters have made food
security a primary challenge for ASEAN and the world. Based on the
performance and potential of agricultural sector in the region, ASEAN
has not only been able to ensure food security for the region, but can
do so for the world. To realize this potential we need to further
promote cooperation in the agriculture sector by focusing on boosting
productivity and agriculture diversification through addressing a range
of problems including infrastructure, technology, financing, marketing,
and processing of agricultural products for the region and for export to
the rest of the world. Specifically, there are some countries in ASEAN
that export milled rice while some others import it. This would open an
important opportunity for rice trade cooperation to ensure regional food
security through establishing a common agreement in our region. I think
that ASEAN Leaders should encourage relevant ministers and senior
officials especially our economic and agriculture ministers to conduct
studies and propose practical cooperation initiatives on this issue.
- Your Majesty the Sultan, Excellencies, Ladies, and Gentlemen! Apart
from the above priority agenda, we still have many other challenging
issues that need to be jointly addressed in order to bring about
progress
and
prosperity for our people and to promote ASEAN's prestige in the
international arena. In relation to this, there are some initiatives
that we have already started working on and which need to be completed
as soon as possible. Indeed, in order to realize the ASEAN Community by 2015, cooperation
at government level alone is not sufficient. This requires a broader
participation of relevant stakeholders at all levels, particularly the
support and participation of ASEAN people as a whole. In this sense,
ASEAN Leaders' dialogue with the ASEAN Inter-parliamentary Assembly
(AIPA), representatives of civil society organizations and youth
representatives is another integral part of our effort to transform
ASEAN into a people-centered community and increase its relevance for
the ASEAN people.
At
the end, I would like to stress that it has been more than 10 years
since Cambodia became a full member of ASEAN. We are proud that during
this period Cambodia was able to make considerable progress. ASEAN
membership has allowed Cambodia to strengthen integration with the
region and the international community. At the same time, Cambodia has
been strictly fulfilling her role in ASEAN to build a peaceful,
prosperous and harmonious regional community, as well as transform ASEAN
into a model of regional cooperation with global importance. As the
Chair of ASEAN in 2012, Cambodia will make utmost effort within its
capacity to closely cooperate with other member countries for achieving
various priorities of ASEAN toward the building of "ASEAN: One Community, One Destiny". I strongly believe that the "Phnom Penh Agenda" as
outlined above will help bring ASEAN even closer toward achieving this
goal. I sincerely hope that all esteemed Leaders of ASEAN will extend
cooperation for ensuring the success of the implementation of the
proposed agenda.
Finally,
I would like to wish Your Majesty the Sultan, Excellencies the esteemed
Leaders of ASEAN and distinguished delegates of all ASEAN countries
good health and success in all your endeavors and the 20th ASEAN Summit be crowned with bright success.
May I now announce the official opening of the 20th ASEAN Summit!
Thank you for your attention!