The ASEAN community’s sustainable culture and art development depends on the fine values of every smaller community that forms the bloc, Vietnamese Deputy PM Pham Binh Minh said at an ASEAN meeting that ended on Sunday.

>> 2014 – an important year for ASEAN Community building Minh, who is also Foreign Minister, made the statement at the sixth meeting of the ASEAN Ministers Responsible for Culture & Arts (AMCA) that took place from April 19 to 20 in Hue City, located in central Vietnam. During 47 years of history, ASEAN has made significant progress in building the community that is based on three key pillars: political and security cooperation, economic cooperation, and socio-cultural cooperation, the Vietnamese official said. Deputy PM Minh also noted that ASEAN member states have built a united organization that serves as a positive component in favor of peace, stability and development in the region in particular and the world in general. As far as the pillar of socio-cultural cooperation is concerned, ASEAN ministers have applied many policies to preserve and honor regional cultural heritages, as well as promote mutual understanding among the bloc’s member countries of each other’s cultural identity, Minh said. The host leader proposed that ASEAN ministers discuss specific measures to realize the ASEAN Declaration on Unity in Cultural Diversity: Towards Strengthening ASEAN Community (ASEAN Declaration). The AMCA should ratify particular agreements to step up the building of ASEAN characters, develop the culture area, and properly use cultural heritages for the sake of economic growth and poverty alleviation, Deputy PM Minh said. ASEAN should proactively prepare for a culture and art development strategy to be applicable after 2015, the official said, expressing his hope that regional culture and art colleges and schools should continue sharing experience with one another.

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