Senior Defense officials of ASEAN hold three-day meeting in Manila starting Wednesday

By Ronron
January 23, 2007

Senior Defense officials of member countries of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) will start today (Wednesday) a three-day meeting in Manila, dubbed as the ASEAN Defense Senior Officials Meeting (ADSOM), to talk about security and defense issues in the region.

Philippine Defense Public Affairs Director Rosulo Manlangit said in a statement Tuesday that in attendance to the international event that will be held at the EDSA Shangri-la Hotel in Mandaluyong City are defense officials with the rank of Vice Minister or Permanent Secretary.

The ASEAN is composed of Brunei, Cambodia, Laos, Indonesia, Malaysia, Myanmar, Philippines, Singapore, Thailand and Vietnam.

“Aside from the customary exchange of views on regional and international security and defense concerns, up for discussion by the ADSOM delegates are: the concept paper on the Protocol of the ADMM (ASEAN Defense Ministers Meeting), Philippine initiatives at laying out a Three-Year Work Programme for the ADMM, and a proposed indicative calendar for ADMM,” said Manlangit.

The Philippines currently chairs the ADMM, “the highest ministerial defense and security consultative and cooperation mechanism in the ASEAN,” said Manlangit.

As host, the Philippine’s Defense Undersecretary Antonio Santos, Jr. will chair the three-day inaugural multilateral meeting.

“The three-day Manila meeting of ADSOM will prepare the administrative and substantive requirements of the series of ADMM-related conferences for calendar year 2007, a number of them to be held in Manila,” reads the statement.

The ADMM was inaugurated in May 2005 in Kuala Lumpur, Malaysia, wherein Defense chiefs of the various ASEAN countries affirmed the ADMM’s role in promoting cooperation on defense and security under the ASEAN framework and in pushing the establishment of an ASEAN Security Community, as stipulated in both the Bali Concord II and the Vientiane Action Program on ASC, the statement said.

Just recently, the 12th ASEAN Summit was held in Cebu, Philippines were heads of States vowed to confront terrorism and other security threats in the region unanimously./DMS