MOSCOW, October 21. /TASS/. The Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) countries have dialogue mechanisms with NATO countries that allows them to express their position, Indonesian envoy to Russia Jose Tavares said in an interview with TASS.
"Even NATO members, not most, but many big powers in the NATO, are also ACEAN’s dialogue parters, say, for exemple, the United States, the United Kingdom, the European Union, they are all dialogue partners of ACEAN. So, we can engage with them in expressing what our position as ASEAN countries is, because we are operating on the basis of several legal instruments, like the Treaty of Amity and Cooperation, that has been acceded by all of our partners in the region," Tavares said.
The Indonesian envoy to Russia noted that the situation in the Asia-Pacific region was relatively stable. "But of course we have hot spots: <..> the South China Sea, the Korean Peninsula, the Taiwan Strait and so on," the diplomat recalled, "In terms of several parts of it, <..> for exemple, the South China Sea, we have a mechanism to handle it. We have a dialogue between ASEAN and China, and the declaration, the Conduct of countries in the South China Sea (the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the South China - TASS), we are [also] moving for The Code of Conduct. And the negotiations are going on. We hope that it could be resolved through this regional mechanism."