KUALA LUMPUR: It was no accident that Asean had always placed a high premium on good ties among its member states.
Foreign Affairs Minister Datuk Seri Anifah Aman said this was because Asean founding fathers had the vision to envisage cooperation and collaboration among seemingly disparate lot of countries.
"They put aside the differences to focus on what could be done collectively to improve the well-being of their peoples.
"They took important confidence building measures to promote peace and stability in a region recognised as a cockpit of international rivalry," Anifah said at the welcoming dinner to honour the Asean Foreign Ministers who arrived at the country's capital to attend the 48th Asean Foreign Ministers (AMM) meeting.
Anifah said these values had helped create mutual trust and confidence among the member states.
"Once a certain level of comfort had been achieved, increasingly deeper levels of cooperation had become possible," he said.