ASEAN Secretary-General Calls the 46th Summit’s Vision 2045 and Timor-Leste’s Admission “Twin Successes”

ASEAN Secretary-General Dr. Kao Kim Hourn called the 46th ASEAN Summit in Kuala Lumpur a success. He said that the adoption of the ASEAN Community Vision 2045 and movement toward Timor-Leste’s full membership were two important results.

The two-day meeting, which was held during Malaysia’s 2025 ASEAN Chairmanship and was themed “Inclusivity and Sustainability,” he said, captured the spirit of ASEAN’s shared goals.

Kao discussed the summit’s “twin successes”: the start of the ASEAN Community Vision 2045 with four strategic plans and the agreement to make Timor-Leste ASEAN’s 11th full member. The country will be officially admitted at the October summit.

“Leaders agreed on Timor-Leste’s full membership during the retreat session of the summit,” he said, adding that the ASEAN Secretariat has set up a team just for Timor-Leste to help with the process of joining.

He said this at the ASEAN Headquarters, where diplomats and members of the media were present for a briefing on the results of the summits, which included the 2nd ASEAN-GCC Summit and the ASEAN-GCC-China Summit.

Kao discussed the summit’s general success, saying that it met its goals in terms of participation, content, and organization, and that 22 outcome documents were signed during the summit.

Kao said that ASEAN leaders had “frank and candid” talks about problems within the group, especially about the situation in Myanmar and economic pressures in the region.

“Meetings with China and the GCC also emphasize building trust within the region and with partners from outside the region,” he said.

When it came to Myanmar, he said that leaders reaffirmed the five-point consensus and saw that support for naming a long-term special envoy to step up diplomatic efforts in the face of ongoing violence and humanitarian worries was growing.

Kao said that the US tariffs are having a big effect on the economies of ASEAN countries, but they have decided not to fight back and instead want to work together with Washington to find a solution.

He also said that the bloc was going to improve its free trade deals with South Korea and look into the possibility of making one with the GCC.

At the meeting between ASEAN and the GCC, both groups agreed to work together more on trade, business, tourism, air connectivity, people-to-people exchange, and the energy transition. They also agreed to talk about the problems in Palestine and Gaza.

There was also the first ASEAN-GCC-China Summit, where leaders talked about how important it is to have a multilateral trading system built on rules and looked for ways that trade, energy, and technology could work together.

When asked if Papua New Guinea (PNG) could join ASEAN after Indonesia said it would be a good idea, Kao said that the idea had been brought up, but there had been no official discussion among ASEAN member states yet.

“That’s something our officials would have to look into,” he said, adding that all present members would have to agree for PNG to join.