Experience shows that enhanced regional cooperation can be both the engine and the result of globalization.

Regional cooperation makes it possible to capitalize on the advantages of globalization while reducing its risks.

Cooperation for development has now become the major trend of our contemporary world. We have clearly witnessed that diverse forms and scope of cooperation have taken place within and among the regions thus providing a strong boost to the world economic growth.

In the coming time, the world and regional situation will continue to have many complex and unpredictable changes, opportunities and challenges will continue to intertwine. The good news is that peace, cooperation and development are still the major trend, the common aspiration of all peoples.

I hope we will have developed partnerships and cooperative relations with scholars in other parts of the world, especially in the Global South. For me, such pooling of intellectual and material resources will generate new and necessary ways of engaging with the world's challenges.

Since the inception of the new century, international situations have undergone complex and profound changes. Against the background of the in-depth development of economic globalization, interdependence among countries is continuously deepening. To peruse peace, promote cooperation and seek development has become the theme of the current era. However, our world is far from peaceful, and destabilizing and unpredictable factors are obviously growing. Blood-shed and clashes resulting from ethnic, religious, territorial issues and other traditional security factors have not become fewer and non-traditional threats to security represented by transnational crimes, epidemic diseases, terrorism and the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction are increasing day by day. Mankind is facing an unprecedented severe challenge.

We have entered a time of global transition marked by uniquely contradictory trends. Regional and continental associations of States are evolving ways to deepen cooperation and ease some of the contentious characteristics of sovereign and nationalistic rivalries. National boundaries are blurred by advanced communications and global commerce, and by the decisions of States to yield some sovereign prerogatives to larger, common political associations. At the same time, however, fierce new assertions of nationalism and sovereignty spring up, and the cohesion of States is threatened by brutal ethnic, religious, social, cultural or linguistic strife. Social peace is challenged on the one hand by new assertions of discrimination and exclusion and, on the other, by acts of terrorism seeking to undermine evolution and change through democratic means.

In the new century, the trend towards economic globalization has grown stronger. The New Economy has developed at an extraordinary speed. The economic situation in the Asia-Pacific region has undergone many changes. We need to think about ways to cope with these new developments. There is no denying that economic globalization has triggered more fierce market competition worldwide. As major players in economic activities and technological innovation, enterprises are obviously under pressure from competition. However, a wider range of competition implies a wider range of cooperation at the same time. We stand for cooperation amidst competition, common development through cooperation and economic prosperity from common development, which will eventually lead to a better life for all people together.

Alongside new capital, innovative instruments, partnerships and new ways of working together are critical if we are to overcome the challenges posed by climate, pandemics and debt. These new, integrated, initiatives announced today are embodiment of what can come out of new cooperative ways of working together.

Romania stands as a catalyst for cooperation in her region, and is keen to bring up this experience at the international level.

The physical basis for international cooperation is being more firmly established each decade. Space is being bridged and time eliminated by modern inventions.

Insights from development initiatives across the world are shared and analyzed, and lessons identified. Innovative theoretical concepts are investigated by key academic writers, and the uses of these concepts for policy and practice are explored.

My country's particular experience in Southeastern Europe and the wider Black Sea area reveals that meaningful cooperation between the U.N. and regional organizations is decisive both on conflict management, and in handling responses to transnational non-conventional threats.

We also need an integrated and innovative approach to respond simultaneously to a whole range of inter-related challenges, such as health, demographic changes, migration, scarce resources, climate change and biodiversity loss, extreme poverty and hunger.