Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong,

Fellow Ministers and Colleagues,

Excellencies,

Ladies and Gentlemen,

Let me first warmly welcome the Foreign Ministers and the Secretary-General of ASEAN to Singapore for the ASEAN Ministerial Meeting, the Post Ministerial Conferences and the ASEAN Regional Forum.  I would also like to welcome HE Samuel Abal, Foreign Minister of Papua New Guinea, as a Special Observer, and HE Zacarias Albano di Costa, Foreign Minister of Timor-Leste, as Guest of the Chair. I look forward to fruitful discussions over the next few days, among ourselves and with our Dialogue Partners and ARF colleagues.

Last year marked ASEAN's 40th Anniversary, since its founding in 1967.  With the signing of the Charter, we have opened a new chapter.  What we do or don’t do in the next few years will determine ASEAN's course for the coming decades.  Our choices will determine the shape of the political and security architecture in Southeast Asia in this century.  With the rapid rise of China and India, ASEAN has to deepen its integration to stay competitive and relevant.

Beyond the political, security and economic concerns, we need to bring ASEAN down to the man in the street.  He must know that all we do is ultimately on his behalf.  For the ASEAN Community to be built, we need our peoples to internalise a sense of ASEAN citizenship.  This will take time of course. It is important that each succeeding generation feels more for ASEAN than its preceding generation.  In other words, ASEAN has to be built both top down and bottom up.  This was why we organized activities that reached out to everyone last year for ASEAN’s 40^th Anniversary celebrations including an ASEAN Rock Festival, exchange of postcards by schoolchildren and an ASEAN crew that sailed around the world.

Let us press on to build a stronger ASEAN in the coming days of meeting.  I now have the honour to invite Prime Minister Lee Hsien Loong to give the Opening Address.  Prime Minister, please.

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SINGAPORE
21 JULY 2008