Vietnam urged all APEC (Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation) economic members to foster their tourism cooperation to head for the community's development of stability, sustainability and prosperity.

"We should closely cooperate in making tourism promotion, facilitating tourists' travel, opening more direct flights between new destinations, developing human resources, and continuously improving service quality," Vietnamese Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Pham Gia Khiem said at the opening ceremony of the one-day 4th APEC Tourism Ministerial Meeting on Tuesday morning.

The tourism cooperation in the Asia-Pacific region through multilateral framework of APEC and other regional ones will create more huge power sources, making contribution to promoting the image and improving the position of the travel industry and the community as whole, he noted.

In addition, the APEC members should join hands in finding proper and effective solutions for tourism development, especially in dealing with such challenges as terrorism affects, partial conflicts, diseases, disasters and poverty, he said.

The Vietnamese government commits to actively cooperate with other APEC members for the tourism development in the region, the deputy prime minister said.

At a retreat on Monday, the ministers centered their discussion on assuring safety and security for tourists, developing sustainable tourism, facilitating visitors' travel in the region, improving tourism infrastructure and products, and preventing and dealing with risks in the industry.

APEC ministers responsible for tourism have met biennially since 2000 to discuss measures on enhancing tourism development in the region.

APEC has 21 member economies, including China, the United States, Japan, Vietnam, Singapore and Australia, which account for more than a third of the world's population, over 41 percent of world trade.

(Xinhua News Agency October 17, 2006)