Addressing a ceremony held to mark the anniversary of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) day, Zarif said: “In this age that multilateralism is under threat and unilateralism is destroying our accomplishments over the past several decades, it is always a sign of hope to see a prosperous, successful and energetics gathering of important members of our Asians gathered in ASEAN people who can think and plan for themselves and who can think ahead and think progressively for a better future not only for their own citizens but for the citizens of the global community at large.”
ASEAN now celebrating its 52nd anniversary is a valuable lesson of coming together and synergizing in order to advance and ASEAN has provided a good example to the rest of us and it will be doing better both individually and collectively once we come together and work together instead of working against each other particularly for us in this region where some of us have tried to purchase security from outside some of us have tried to put their reliance on the outsiders it is important to show that working with your own people in your own neighborhood is always a much better success.
“We in Iran have lot of respect for the countries in the ASEAN, we respect the accomplishments,” Zarif reiterated.
Elsewhere in his remarks, Iranian top diplomat said: “If you want others to respect you, you need to respect yourselves and ASEAN is an example of self-respect and we want to have greater cooperation with the ASEAN that is why it was an honor for me to go to Singapore and to announce the finalization of Iran accession to the treaty of amity and cooperation.”
Zarif noted: “It is always a good sign that we get closer to our friends”
“We want to expand those areas in the treaty of amity and cooperation and we want to be able to also strengthen our cooperation between our regional organizations.”
Referring to the presence of the secretary general of the Economic Cooperation Organization (ECO) in the event, Zarif said: “His presence here indicates the importance that ECO gives to cooperation between ECO and Asia to important regional organizations whose cooperation can contribute to peace, development and security for all of us.”
“Once again I want to stress that the view of the Islamic Republic of Iran is cooperation and positive engagement.”
“We continue to believe that through cooperation and constructive engagement it can be a better world my presence here today is a tribute to the accomplishment of our friends in the ASEAN.”
Zarif added: “At the same time I want to ask our friends our neighbors in this region that there is nothing that prevent us from doing this noting that prevents us from establishing cooperation among ourselves, nothing prevents us from joining together rather than working against each other.”
“Others will never protect us others will never provide the security others will never provide well-being we need to have self-respect if we want others to respect us we need to be partners to each other,” he reiterated.
The Association of Southeast Asian Nations is a regional intergovernmental organization comprising ten countries in Southeast Asia, which promotes intergovernmental cooperation and facilitates economic, political, security, military, educational, and sociocultural integration among its members and other countries in Asia.
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