Vietnamese Foreign Minister Pham Binh Minh is attending the two-day 16th Summit of the Non-Aligned Movement (NAM), which opened in Tehran, Iran on Thursday. Themed “Lasting Peace through Joint Global Governance”, the Summit brought together 40 heads of governments and foreign ministers from 120 NAM member countries and representatives from 30 other countries and international organizations.

Vietnamese Foreign Minister Pham Binh Minh (Photo: Internet)

At the opening ceremony, Egyptian President Mohamed Morsi and Iranian President Mahmoud Ahmadinejad, the new chairman of NAM, called on NAM members to use their potential to play a more determining role in global management. UN Secretary-General Ban Ki-moon highlighted the important and contributive role of NAM in resolving many of the current issues, and stressed the significant role of special envoy Lakhdar Brahimi in promoting peace, stability and human rights in Syria and called on all sides to support him in fulfilling his mission.

In a world challenged by complicated developments, NAM continues to be the most important and strongest means for developing countries to safeguard their own interests while working to establish a favorable environment for peace, stability and development free of intimidation, injustice or violence. The summit will continue on Friday to prepare a summary resolution.

On the sidelines of the Summit, Foreign Minister Pham Binh Minh met with the Cambodian and Bhutanese Prime Ministers, the foreign ministers of Indonesia, Singapore, Mongolia, Ghana, Mauritius, Senegal, Bolivia, and Belarus, and the Minister of the Presidential Office of Mozambique and the Secretary of State of the United Arab Emirates to talk about cooperation at multilateral forums and strengthening bilateral ties.

On August 28 and 29, the head of the Vietnamese delegation to the UN, Ambassador Le Hoai Trung, attended a NAM ministerial meeting, where he asserted that Vietnam is an active and responsible member of ASEAN and NAM. Trung highlighted NAM’s efforts to ensure peace, national independence and development to contribute greatly to addressing major issues facing the world. He also raised Vietnam’s stance on handling disputes in the East Sea, saying that these disputes should be solved peacefully based on fundamental principles of international law, including the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea. In this spirit, the Vietnamese representative also affirmed the importance of the 2002 Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the East Sea (DOC), the adoption of the Guidance implementing the DOC in 2011, as well as the early conclusion of the Code of Conduct in the East Sea (COC)