HANOI, July 31 — The 11th meeting of the Asean Coordinating Council Working Group on Timor-Leste’s Application for Asean Membership was held recently via teleconference, Vietnam News Agency (VNA) reported.
The Vietnamese delegation to the event was headed by Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Nguyen Quoc Dung, head of the Senior Officials Meeting (SOM) Asean Vietnam.
The meeting reviewed the study of Timor-Leste’s Asean membership application across the three pillars of politics-security, economy and culture-society of the Asean Community and the implementation of programmes to help the country improve its capacity.
They appreciated the achieved results, including the completion of a document guiding Timor-Leste in joining Asean activities and lists of activities on the three pillars. The guiding document and the lists of activities will be submitted to the 29th meeting of the Asean Coordinating Council, slated for Aug 2.
In his remarks, Dung praised efforts made to help Timor-Leste join Asean despite the Covid-19 pandemic.
He said the document and the lists will serve as the basis for Asean’s specialised agencies to implement substantive activities to help Timor-Leste raise its capacity.
Dung suggested Asean Community’s pillars and the Asean Secretariat continue to assist the country in participating in certain activities of the ten-member grouping.
Asean gathers Brunei, Cambodia, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore, Thailand, and Vietnam.
— Bernama
