Want China Times
Date: 2015-08-06
By: Xinhua and Staff Reporter
The ongoing 48th Foreign Ministers’ Meeting of the Association of Southeast Asian
Malaysia’s foreign minister Anifah Aman, left, meets Brunei’s foreign minister Mohamed Bolkiah at the 48th ASEAN foreign ministers meeting in Kuala Lumpur, Aug. 4. (Photo/Xinhua)
Nations (ASEAN) in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, is not a proper platform for discussing the South China Sea issue but an important one for promoting regional cooperation.
Top of the agenda of the meeting is the establishment of the ASEAN Community and the Post-2015 Vision, as the ten-nation bloc is in the final stages of realizing the goal of establishing an ASEAN Community that involves a plan to create a common economic, political-security and socio-cultural region by the end of this year.
In this sense, participants of the Foreign Ministers’ Meeting and following meetings need to discuss regional cooperation in such fields as trade and economy, communication, and non-traditional security in East Asia.
Beijing feels that multilateral forums have never been an appropriate place for discussing specific bilateral disputes, and attempts to do so can not help resolve the underlying issues as proven by past experiences. On the contrary, hyping up the South China Sea issue will make the already tense situation there worse. [FULL STORY]
