High-level Ministerial meetings in both Asia and Europe in recent weeks have highlighted a resumption of such consultations within the Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) process since the Hanoi Summit meeting in October 2004 with some apparent display of the new desire to carve out areas of activity and intensify others.

One serious participant and analyst of the ASEM process remarked shortly before the Hanoi Summit meeting in October that it needed "to reinvent itself." Whether that dire observation was true, it does not appear to have been accepted, considered or acted upon at the recent ASEM Summit in Hanoi, which was supposedly dedicated to revitalising and substantiating ASEM.

The ASEM political leadership and the business community from the two regions appeared to have forged a new relationship at the Hanoi summit October 8-9 and agreed to consult more closely in the future in a way to make that bond "substantially interactive," in the words of the government leaders.

Living up to previous encounters and expectations for their latest deliberations, leaders from the two regions used their Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) summit in Hanoi October 8-9 in Hanoi as a informal forum of discussion for a broad agenda of global and internal issues that need concrete following up for future Top-echelon and Ministerial negotiations and implementation.