Outcome of Twelfth Session of ASEAN Regional Forum on Security in Vientiane
Unofficial translation from Russian
PRESS RELEASE
The Twelfth Session of the ASEAN Regional Forum was held on July 29 in Vientiane, Laos, as part of annual events of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. ARF is the key mechanism for interstate dialogue on security issues in the AP region, incorporating twenty-three countries of the region, including Russia, the PRC, the US, Japan, India, Pakistan, the ASEAN nations, and also the European Union. Minister of Foreign Affairs Sergey Lavrov headed our country's delegation at the meeting.
The session discussed a broad range of pressing regional and global security problems, and held a constructive and keen discussion on such vital issues as UN reform, the struggle against international terrorism, WMD nonproliferation, the nuclear problem on the Korean Peninsula, the situation in Iraq and Afghanistan, and Middle East settlement. Considerable emphasis was given to examining the prospects for deepening the Forum's engagement with other regional organizations and forming a system for comprehensive prediction, prevention and elimination of consequences of environmental disasters in Asia.
The meeting participants exchanged views on the future directions of the Forum's evolution and activities, more specifically in the context of enhancing the military component of the dialogue within the framework of the ARF. East Timor was officially admitted into the ARF.
In the course of the session an ARF Statement on Information Sharing and Intelligence Exchange and Document Integrity, meant to contribute to deepening the cooperation of the region's countries in combating terrorism and other kinds of transnational crime, was adopted.
Sergey Lavrov held a series of bilateral meetings with a number of heads of foreign affairs agencies of ARF member states, in the course of which a substantive exchange of views on practical aspects of Russian cooperation with these states took place.
July 29, 2005