Special Envoy of Indonesia’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs and Director General of ASEAN Cooperation, Mr. Jose Tavares, accompanied by Ambassador of Indonesia in Vietnam, H.E. Ibnu Hadi, presented an invitation letter from Minister of Foreign Affairs Retno L.P. Marsudi to Vietnam’s Minister of Foreign Affairs Pham Binh Minh to attend the High Level Dialogue on Indo Pacific Cooperation: Towards a Peaceful, Prosperous, and Inclusive Region (HLD-IPC), to be held in Jakarta on March 20.

The invitation was presented to Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs To Anh Dung on March 13.

HLD-IPC is a dynamic and interactive platform for deeper and inclusive collaboration between stakeholders in the Indian and Pacific Ocean regions. The high-level dialogue will be chaired by the Indonesian Minister of Foreign Affairs and invited ministers and senior officials from 17 countries: Australia, Brunei, Cambodia, China, India, Japan, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, New Zealand, the Philippines, South Korea, Singapore, Russia, Thailand, the US, and Vietnam.

Mr. Tavares said the rationale in organizing the high-level dialogue is to further complement and strengthen ASEAN’s efforts in shaping the Indo-Pacific region by promoting ASEAN principles more broadly. Deputy Minister Dung welcomed plans for holding the dialogue and expressed his appreciation of Indonesia’s leadership in ASEAN.

Vietnam is the first country visited by the Special Envoy. Indonesia believes that participation by ASEAN member states is important for HLD-IPC, given the region’s strategic location in the middle of the two great oceans.