ASEAN senior officials meet in Vietnam, Rohingya refugee high on agenda

KHANH HOA, Jan 17, 2020, VNA. Senior officials of ASEAN countries met in the first ASEAN Senior Officials’ Meeting (SOM) of 2020 in Nha Trang city of the south central province of Khanh Hoa on January 16. The meeting is presided over by Deputy Foreign Minister and head of the ASEAN SOM Vietnam delegation Nguyen Quoc Dung, Vietnam News Agency reported.

The meeting reviewed preparations for the ASEAN Foreign Ministers’ Retreat (AMM Retreat) slated for January 16 and 17. The officials also discussed the pace of implementation of ASEAN leaders’ decisions at the 35th ASEAN Summit in Thailand in 2019, as well as external relations, regional and international issues, among others.

Participants spoke highly of the orientations, priorities and initiatives proposed by Vietnam as Chair of ASEAN in 2020 to carry out cooperation plans of ASEAN in the year.

They also affirmed to put more efforts into raising the organisation’s central role and positive image in international forums.

They added that as Vietnam and Indonesia are both non-permanent members of the United Nations Security Council, ASEAN has more chances to bolster exchanges and cooperation with the UN and other international organisations, thereby positively contributing to peace, stability, security and prosperity of the region and the world.

Speaking at the meeting, Deputy FM Dung pledged that as ASEAN Chair in 2020, Vietnam will spare no efforts for success of the ASEAN Community.

Foreign ministers from Southeast Asian nations in Vietnam for a two-day meeting continued talks on Friday, with South China Sea tensions and stalled Rohingya refugee repatriation to Myanmar high on the agenda, Kyodo reported.

At a working dinner on Thursday night, the ministers tentatively agreed to a US proposal for a special summit with the Association of Southeast Asian Nations on March 14 in Las Vegas, but Asean leaders will have the final say on the matter, Asean sources said.

US President Donald Trump invited Asean leaders to the United States for the summit after he skipped Asean-hosted summits in November in Bangkok and disappointed his Asean counterparts with his absence from the region’s most important annual event for a second straight year.

The ministers also held a long discussion about the Rohingya issue at the dinner, according to Foreign Minister Don Pramudwinai. A Myanmar representative briefed others on leader Aung San Suu Kyi’s recent defence of her country’s treatment of the Muslim minority at the International Court of Justice (ICJ) at The Hague, he said.

More than 740,000 members of the minority group have fled from Myanmar’s Rakhine state to neighbouring Bangladesh since August 2017 to escape a military crackdown on insurgents, creating a humanitarian crisis.

At the ICJ, Buddhist-majority Myanmar has been accused of carrying out genocide against the Rohingya through “acts adopted, taken and condoned” by the Myanmar government. The UN court is set to issue a ruling next Thursday.

Malaysian Foreign Minister Saifuddin Abdullah said on his Facebook page on Friday that those who perpetrated the killings must be brought to justice while the safe return of refugees should happen as quickly as possible.

The minister also called on the Myanmar government to grant citizenship to Rohingya people within its borders before repatriation of those outside occurs.

Asean has deepened its involvement in the thorny issue despite its principle of noninterference in the domestic affairs of member states, with Muslim-majority Malaysia and Indonesia repeatedly calling on Myanmar to facilitate the repatriation process.

Regarding the South China Sea, where several Asean members have competing territorial claims with China, the foreign ministers still wanted to achieve the goal of setting a “Code of Conduct” between Asean and China to manage the disputes, the Thai minister said.

The two-day meeting began Thursday in the seaside town of Nha Trang with the working dinner, followed by an informal meeting on Friday.

The “retreat” marked the first Asean ministerial meeting to be hosted by Vietnam since it recently took over the rotating chairmanship of the 10-member regional body from Thailand.