Vietnamese Deputy Secretary General of ASEAN receives 7 kg of documents

"The job I am taking on in the future has many new things compared to now, so I am both excited and a little worried," Mr. Hoang Anh Tuan shared withVnExpressbefore officially becoming ASEAN Deputy Secretary General.

In meetings last November, ASEAN foreign ministers agreedthrough the appointment of Ambassador Hoang Anh Tuan as Deputy Secretary General of ASEAN, in charge of Political and Security Affairs. His term will begin in February 2018 and end in February 2021. Mr. Tuan will replacegrandfatherHirubalan VP, Singaporean.

Ambassador Tuan takes on a new role in ASEAN after Mr. Le Luong Minh just transferred his position.Secretary Generalfor youLim Jok Hoi, representative of Brunei.

The new Vietnamese deputy secretary general of ASEAN explains that his position requires covering multilateral diplomatic activities.includes many different areas of work and the workload is much larger than before. Nature of workdifferent from the bilateral diplomacy he has carried out since 2016 as Vietnamese Ambassador to Indonesia.

Nearly a month ago, Ambassador Tuan received a large amount of documents from his predecessor.Hirubalan.

"Weighing about 7 kg, equivalent to 3,000 pages, the number of documents I received has actually been reduced," Mr. Tuan shared about the amount of work that needs to be covered.

That means he needs to research the regulations, records and relationships he needs to establish over the next three years.in charge of ASEAN political cooperation, security and foreign relations,AmbassadorTuan will contribute to organizing key meetings between ASEAN and major partners such as the Regional Security Forum.(ARF), the East Asia Summit (EAS) and negotiations on the Code of Conduct in the South China Sea (COC) with China. The two forums ARF and EAS chaired by ASEAN attracted the attention of all eight partners including the US, Russia,China,Australia, Japan, India, South Korea, and New Zealand.

In the context of constantly changing regional and international contexts,The new deputy secretary-general assessed that ASEAN is facing many challenges in security, politics, economics and other issues. The association needs to have timely and decisive responses.

"ASEAN's current challenges are also multidimensional and larger than the challenges the Association has faced before. Therefore, expectations for ASEAN are also much greater," said Mr. Tuan.

In the immediate future, the new Deputy Secretary-General will focus on helpingstrengthening foreign relations, political-security-defense cooperation among ASEAN member countries and between ASEAN and external partners. He also focused onhelp the Secretariat implement"ASEAN Community Vision 2015", including"ASEAN Political-Security Community Blueprint 2025". These activities aim to coveris to strengthen solidarity within the bloc and enhance ASEAN's central role in regional structures.

"There are many wishes and plans. I think."To make the goals come true, we need to start right from the beginning and persevere until the last day of our term," Mr. Tuan shared.

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