Dacic meets with ASEAN secretary-general

JAKARTA - Serbian First Deputy PM and FM Ivica Dacic met with ASEAN Secretary-General Kao Kim Hourn on the sidelines of the 43rd ASEAN summit in Jakarta on Tuesday.

The parties said they were pleased ASEAN member states had recognised Serbia's strong interest in acceding to the Treaty of Amity and Cooperation in Southeast Asia, the Serbian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said in a statement.

It said Serbia's accession to the treaty was aimed at further strengthening political relations and overall cooperation with traditionally friendly states in southeast Asia that were ASEAN members as well as at underlining the significance it attached to further deepening of bilateral and multilateral cooperation with countries in the region.

Dacic noted Serbia was proud of the decades-long friendship and strong ties with countries in southeast Asia that he said dated back to the 1950s and 1960s and the period of the establishment of the Non-Aligned Movement and its most intensive activities.

He said Serbia, as a successor of the former Yugoslavia, continued to advance and develop cooperation with ASEAN member states while respecting the fundamental values of the Non-Aligned Movement, including mutual respect of independence, sovereignty, equality, territorial integrity and the national identities of all peoples, non-interference in internal matters of other states and advocacy of overcoming all differences by peaceful means and encouraging comprehensive peaceful development and progress, which he noted were also the fundamental values of ASEAN.

The parties agreed that the accession to the ASEAN treaty provided many opportunities for development of cooperation in various fields as southeast Asia was one of the most dynamic, richest and most diverse regions in the world.

Hourn said the signing of the treaty should boost comprehensive bilateral cooperation with ASEAN states, not only politically and economically, but also in culture, science, education, agriculture, the food industry, health care, defence and security, the fight against terror, prevention of trans-national and other forms of crime as well as in medicine, information technologies, education, inter-human exchanges and other areas, the statement also said.