During the meeting, APEC senior officials reviewed issues which were tabled for discussion at the SOM I in Hanoi in February this year, SOM II in Ho Chi Minh City in May, and SOM III in central Da Nang city and Quang Nam province in September in order to prepare final reports to be presented to the APEC Joint Ministerial Meeting and to be approved by leaders of the APEC member economies.

They discussed what APEC can do through the APEC Ministerial Meeting (AMM) and the APEC Economic Leaders' Meeting (AELM) to support the WTO and the Doha Development Agenda and consider the revised Hanoi Action Plan to implement the Busan Roadmap.

Other major topics of discussion include APEC reform, regional trade agreements/free trade agreements (RTA/FTAs) model measures, and a proposal for preventing illegal use of software and other copyright materials, and the 2006 counter terrorism deliverables.

Speaking at the opening ceremony, Deputy Foreign Minister Le Cong Phung said, “CSOM has two major tasks. First, it will consider and finalise all reports on APEC cooperation and all work implemented last year for submission to ministers and leaders of the APEC member economies. Second, it will have to prepare documents for the APEC Ministerial Meeting (AMM) and the 14^th APEC Economic Leaders' Meeting (AELM).”

“During the past year,  we agreed with a majority of issues that need to be submitted to ministers and leaders. With the important issues agreed upon at SOM 3, I hope that at this meeting, we can reach a consensus on the achievements in the whole year of APEC 2006. I call on members to exert greater efforts to implement all the set targets.”

APEC senior officials will have a plenary session on November 13 to review all reports discussed at the previous SOMs and to finalise all documents for submission to the APEC Economic Leaders’ Meeting scheduled for November 18-19.