East Timor made its debut on Friday on the ASEAN summit, hosted by neighboring Indonesia, which currently heads the organization. East Timor received approval to hitch ASEAN “in principle” last yr.
Adaljiza Magno, Minister of Foreign Affairs of East Timor, together together with her counterparts from Southeast Asia, except Myanmar, attended the thirty second meeting of the ASEAN Coordination Council (ACC) in Jakarta.
In a speech on the opening session of the ACC, Foreign Minister Retno Marsudi said: “Our ACC meeting is unique and historic for ASEAN, whose leaders last November in Phnom Penh agreed in principle to admit East Timor as the eleventh member of ASEAN and to grant observer status, and will enable it to participate in all ASEAN meetings, including the summit plenary sessions.”
As a result, she added, “today, for the primary time, we welcome the participation of the Minister of Foreign Affairs of Timor-Leste.”
Magno admitted that East Timor’s path to joining the Southeast Asian bloc was difficult within the presence of the assembled ASEAN ambassadors. But the mission isn’t insurmountable. We are on the best path and with great optimism and determination we’re heading towards the best end of our journey,” Magno noted.
“The incontrovertible fact that now we have reached this position can be the results of our team working together and the assistance of other ASEAN members. We couldn’t complete this journey alone,” she continued. The ACC meeting continued behind closed doors.
Retno revealed that the ACC meeting produced quite a lot of results, including the adoption of rules on East Timor’s observer status at a subsequent press conference. Retno told reporters: “We also supported the updated TOR [terms of reference] ACC Working Group on East Timor.
Retno says the council also issued instructions to the working group to develop a draft motion plan for all the East Timor membership.
East Timor applied for ASEAN membership in 2011, and it took over a decade for it to finally make significant progress. In addition, ASEAN has dispatched fact-finding teams to evaluate the suitability of East Timor to hitch the organization as its eleventh member. These missions concerned the pillars of the economic, political, security and socio-cultural community.
Source: JakartaGlobe.id
