80 senior officials, experts and scholars from Indonesia, Malaysia, Thailand, and Vietnam attended a round-table conference themed “Strengthening ASEAN’s regional integration through multi-channel dialogue” in Kuala Lumpur on Wednesday. This was part of a series of conferences to consolidate and strengthen the role of ASEAN in the context of rapid changes in the region and the world. Participants discussed ASEAN in relations to the development of China and India, challenges to the building of an ASEAN community, preservation of ASEAN identity and value, security in the Asian region, and disputes in the East Sea.  The Vietnamese delegation was led by Hoang Anh Tuan, Head of the Institute for Strategic and Foreign Policy Studies under the Diplomatic Academy of Vietnam. During the three-day event, the Vietnamese head delegate and Malaysia’s Chairman of the Foreign Policy Study Group, Razali Ismail, signed a memorandum of understanding (MoU) on strengthening cooperation between the two agencies.