SINGAPORE, Tuesday 22 January 2013 – The Middle Planning Conference (MPC) for the ASEAN Defence Ministers’ Meeting-Plus Humanitarian Assistance and Disaster Relief and Military Medicine Exercise (ADMM-Plus HADR and MM Ex) begins today at the Marina Mandarin Hotel, Singapore.

The MPC was chaired by First Admiral Dato Seri Pahlawan Abdul Aziz Haji Mohd Tamit, Joint Force Commander, Royal Brunei Armed Forces, with the participation of ADMM-Plus countries representing both the Experts’ Working Group (EWG) on HADR and EWG on Military Medicine. Both the Co-Chairs of the ADMM-Plus EWGs on HADR and MM, namely Vietnam and China, and Singapore and Japan respectively, also led the discussion in this Meeting.

On this first day of the meeting, the ADMM-Plus countries focused the discussions on the confirmation of contribution of military assets and personnel from the participating countries, confirmation of the exercise design, discussion on the exercise related documents including the Exercise SOP and Exercise Instruction, followed by break-out sessions of the 10 Working Groups pertinent to the comprehensive planning and preparations of the Exercise.

The ten Working Groups (WG) consist of the HADR TF HQ & Command and Control (C2) WG, Air WG, Naval WG, Medical WG, Engineers WG, Logistics WG, Exercise SOP WG, Safety WG, Media and Publicity WG and Communications WG.

The MPC will end on Thursday, 24 January 2013. The ADMM-Plus HADR and MM Ex will be the first exercise under the ADMM-Plus mechanism that will represent a concrete demonstration of practical cooperation. It was supported at the ASEAN Defence Senior Officials’ Meeting (ADSOM) and the ASEAN Defence Senior Officials’ Meeting-Plus (ADSOM-Plus) in Siem Reap, Cambodia, in April 2012, and endorsed by the ASEAN Defence Ministers at their Meeting in Phnom Penh, Cambodia, in May 2012.

The Exercise is scheduled to be held on 16 – 20 June 2013, back-to-back with the 2nd AHX. Both Exercises are the major deliverables during Brunei Darussalam’s ADMM and ADMM-Plus Chairmanship this year. The ADMM-Plus countries consist of the ten ASEAN countries and including Australia, China, India, Japan, New Zealand, Republic of Korea, Russia and USA.