ASIATODAY.ID, MELBOURNE – Indonesian Minister of Foreign Affairs, Retno Marsudi said that the ASEAN-Australia Summit in Melbourne had produced two documents.
First, the Melbourne Declaration. “The content of the Melbourne Declaration is the direction of cooperation in the political, security, economic and socio-cultural fields in the future,” he said, in an official statement, on Wednesday, March 6 2024.
Second, the ASEAN-Australia Leaders Vision Statement, which contains the vision of leaders in facing various challenges of geopolitical, geostrategic and geoeconomic change.
Retno explained that the ASEAN-Australia Summit this time carried the theme “A Partnership for the Future”. The summit was broadly divided into two sessions.
The first session discussed “Future ASEAN-Australia Cooperation and The Three ASEAN Cooperation Pillars”. Then, the second session was packaged in the form of a retreat, with the theme “Our Vision for the Region and Addressing Shared Challenges”, which discussed geopolitical issues.
Retno emphasized that in Australia’s eyes, ASEAN is a region with great potential with quite high economic growth, geographical proximity of course, economic complementarity, and is part of Australia’s efforts to diversify the economy.
This summit was also held to commemorate the 50th anniversary of ASEAN’s partnership with Australia. He said that Australia was ASEAN’s first partner, and Australia was also the first partner with which ASEAN had a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership.
As is known, Melbourne is hosting leaders and officials from 10 ASEAN member countries for the ASEAN-Australia Summit meeting which will take place on March 4-6 2024.
As for ASEAN member, Myanmar, was not included in the meeting, due to the ongoing conflict in their country. (ATN)
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