Talking Figures of ASEM 5
A plethora of heads of state and government ministers making ground-breaking commitments regarding economic and cultural partnership between Asia and Europe. Armies of policemen, medical workers, reporters, volunteers. No expense spared on anti-terrorism, health facilities, transport, anti-virus software, high-speed Internet connections.
The fifth Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM 5) held in the capital city of Hanoi on October 8-9 saw the admission of new members, and leaders of ASEM members making high-level commitments on economic and cultural partnership between the two continents, and listened to the voices of business communities. The day before the summit opened, an open-air ceremony was organised to admit 13 new ASEM members, including three members of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) - Laos, Cambodia and Myanmar - and ten new European Union (EU) state members, namely Poland, Hungary, the Czech Republic, Slovakia, Lithuania, Latvia, Estonia, Slovenia, Malta and Cyprus.
The first enlargement summit marked both a qualitative and quantitative development stage for ASEM, an informal process of dialogue and cooperation previously involving 10 EU state members, the European Commission, seven ASEAN members - Vietnam, Brunei, Indonesia, Malaysia, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand - and three Northeast Asian countries, namely China, Japan and South Korea. It was also the first summit at which leaders of 39 delegations from Asia and Europe approved the Hanoi Declaration on Closer ASEM Economic Partnership and the ASEM Declaration on Dialogue among Cultures and Civilisations.
During the ninth Asia-Europe Business Forum (AEBF) organised in Hanoi on October 7-8, heads of state and government of ASEM members met with representatives of the private and public sectors, and reviewed their proposals. AEBF, an annual meeting of private and public sectors of Asia and Europe, has made great contributions towards identifying hindrances to investment and trade in the two continents.
Under the overall title "Further Revitalising and Substantiating the Asia-Europe Partnership" suggested by Vietnam, nearly 1,000 delegates centred their frank and constructive discussions on political, economic and cultural pillars with four main goals. They were to bring ASEM to a new stage in its development with greater revitalisation and substantiation, building bilateral cooperation to tackle the challenges of globalisation, improving the vitality, attractiveness and role of Asia and Europe through ASEM, and making contributions to peace, stability, prosperous development and social progress not only in the two continents but around the world
To ensure ASEM 5’s success, the host country invested around VND200 billion (US$12.7 million) preparing the summit’s content, affairs of protocol, logistical issues, ensuring security, and culture and communication with the involvement of 14 relevant ministries and agencies. Prior to the event, the sub-committee on security under the national committee for ASEM 5 staged a mock terrorist exercise at the Hanoi Hotel. In the simulated scenario, emergency forces, with the support of anti-terrorism vehicles which were used publicly in Vietnam for the first time, rescued hostages and killed or captured a group of armed terrorists. In another exercise, 355 policemen and emergency services personnel rehearsed a security plan, one of the Hanoi police's 12 security plans, at the Guoman Hotel.
During ASEM 5, around 1,000 traffic policemen, and 35 first-aid teams each consisting of two doctors, two nurses and an ambulance, were on duty day and night. Vietnam poured VND4 billion VND (nearly US$255,000) into health care preparations, including VND1.5 billion (over US$95,000) into importing a state-of-the-art ambulance.
For the transport of delegates and officials during the summit, the host country asked five automobile manufacturers, Mercedes-Benz, Toyota, Ford, BMW and Hyundai, to supply 305 automobiles to serve foreign delegations, each of which was expected to require a group of eight cars, including two for the delegation’s head, one for his or her spouse, two for ministers and three for the remaining members of the delegation. The government also assigned Mercedes-Benz Vietnam to import 78 S-Class model vehicles, the most luxurious sedan of Mercedes-Benz, directly from Germany at an import tariff of 55 per cent, instead of the usual 260 per cent. After the summit, all the sedans were sold on the domestic market with prices ranging from US$179,000 to US$279,000, considerably high, given that the most expensive car assembled in Vietnam costs only US$99,900.
In addition to services for VIPs, Vietnam paid due attention to the indispensable army of volunteers and reporters at the summit. Nearly 1,000 young volunteers, mostly staff of travel agencies, served at the International Convention Centre, while over 1,000 local and foreign reporters worked long hours at the International Media Center with a network of nearly 200 desktop and laptop computers with a data transfer speed of 18 Mbps. The centre also housed hundreds of phones, faxes, printers, copiers, scanners and Wi-Fi hot spots for wireless Internet connections. The world’s leading network anti-virus solution provider Trend Micro provided products worth US$176,000, NeaTSuite Enterprise, to the centre free of charge
ASEM, taking place on a alternate biennial basis in Asia and Europe, addresses political, economic and cultural issues, with the objective of broadening and strengthening ties between the two continents. ASEM 1 was held in 1996 in Thailand; ASEM 2 in 1998 in England to primarily discuss issues arising from the Asian financial crisis in 1997; ASEM 3 in 2000 in South Korea to address, inter alia, future directions of the ASEM process and issue the Seoul Declaration for Peace on the Korean Peninsular; and ASEM 4 in 2002 in Denmark, which issued the Copenhagen Political Declaration for Peace on the Korean Peninsular and the Copenhagen Declaration on Cooperation against International Terrorism.
Vietnamese
