Brussels, 16/10/2014 (Agence Europe) - The meeting planned on 17 October between Russia's President Vladimir Putin and Ukraine's President Petro Poroshenko - on the sidelines of the 10th ASEM summit in Milan - was arousing great expectations at the opening of the global event hosted by Europe on Thursday 16 October.
Outgoing presidents of the European Council and European Commission, Herman Van Rompuy and José Manuel Barroso respectively, Germany's Chancellor Angela Merkel, France's President François Hollande, the UK's Prime Minister David Cameron, and the summit's host - Italy's Prime Minister Matteo Renzi, who are due to take part in the first Putin-Poroshenko meeting since the Minsk summit at the end of August, underlined on Thursday that they expected progress from this meeting on the continuation of the peace process in Eastern Ukraine.
Generally, the focus of the agenda of this 10th ASEM summit is regional and international security and peace. For the first time, the ASEM leaders will meet again on Friday morning for a retreat session during which they will be able to tackle sensitive files informally (in other words, more freely) - sensitive files linked to regional and international issues. This will be their chance to discuss the situation in the regions outside the ASEM area (Iraq, Syria and the Middle East, North Africa and Nigeria) and the possible repercussions for European and Asian countries with the threat of Islamic State and international terrorism. It will also be the chance to discuss conflicts involving many countries from ASEM, like those in East Ukraine or in the Korean peninsula, or the territorial conflicts in the South China Sea (which involve China, Taiwan, Vietnam, the Philippines, Malaysia and Brunei) or in the East China Sea (the Senkaku Islands in Japanese) between China, Japan and Taiwan. “In this context, I look forward to reaffirming our shared commitment to peaceful resolution of conflicts in accordance with international law”, Van Rompuy stated at the opening of the summit.
On Thursday, the summit opened with two new member countries - Croatia and Kazakhstan - being officially welcomed to an economic and political dialogue meeting that already has 51 member countries (the 28 EU member states, Norway and Switzerland, the 10 countries of the ASEAN zone, China, Japan and South Korea, Mongolia, India, Pakistan, Bangladesh, Australia, New Zealand and Russia), plus the Commission and the ASEAN secretariat. An initial plenary session was then dedicated to economic and financial cooperation and trade, and a second plenary session addressed global challenges (including climate change, development, human rights, managing catastrophes, energy security, international crime and terrorism). “These and other issues affect all of us. Without more determined national efforts and broad international cooperation we will not be successful”, Van Rompuy stated ahead of the meeting. (EH)