"I am not one of those people who believe that conflict between China and the US is inevitable. It is certainly not desirable and I don't think it is likely. The US will fly, sail and operate whatever international law permits in the South China Sea.
"China is taking some steps which I fear are self-isolating, driving towards a result that none of us want," US Defence Secretary Ashton Carter said here.
Participating in the session, Afghanistan President Ashraf Ghani said, "We need to understand that we are dealing with medium, not short term challenges. We must understand terrorism as an ecology with both competition and cooperation."
According to him, terrorism is directed towards theatre and to call into question the relationship between the state and the citizen.
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NATO Secretary Gerneral Jens Stoltenberg said more and more states are today in a state blurred between war and peace and NATO's challenge is to respond to a more fragile and more dangerous security environment.
Ghani also said the private sector can be great partners in the mission to create stability.
"As long as we're having exclusion of women, we will never have stability," he added.
Political will is not an abstraction, it is a concrete sort of steps to make choices between difficult options, Ghani said, adding that there is need to come out with plans that are deliverable in Afghanistan.
Singapore Deputy Prime Minister Tharman Shammugaratnam said China is a dominant trading partner country for virtually every East Asian nation.
"We are living with a legacy of decades of segregation and a culture of exclusion...," he noted.
Mixed neighbourhoods, workplaces and classrooms are critical for stability, he emphasised.