Premier Wen calls for cooperation on energy security

Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao urged Asian and European countries to boost cooperation on energy security and disaster prevention and mitigation here Tuesday.

Wen made the call in his speech at the second plenary meeting of the ninth Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM) summit.

He said, against the backdrop of profound and complicated changes in the international situation, global problems, such as energy and food security, disaster prevention and mitigation as well as climate change, persisted.

"These are challenges to the full recovery of the world economy and long-term growth of Asian and European countries," Wen said.

Highlighting the importance of energy security, the Chinese premier urged energy producers and consumers in Asia and Europe to work together to formulate a new concept of mutually beneficial cooperation, diversified forms of development and common energy security through coordination.

Therefore, they needed to develop clean and renewable energy, improve energy structure, stabilize prices, safeguard market order and improve efficiency to help build an energy-saving mode of production and consumption, he said.

Wen said Asian countries had accumulated adequate experience in disaster prevention while European countries had manufactured high-tech products in the field.

He, therefore, put forward a three-point proposal on bilateral cooperation in the area.

Firstly, the two sides needed to discuss and coordinate their policies, build a cooperative mechanism on emergency rescue in major disasters and provide humanitarian assistance to each other.

Secondly, they should establish an efficient information exchange channel to improve the ability of disaster monitoring and early warning and strengthen cooperation on the application of space technology in disaster prevention and mitigation.

As his third point, Wen suggested the countries share experience and improve their disaster prevention and mitigation ability through personnel exchange and training.