Vietnam and Cambodia have agreed to keep 11 special task forces that search for and repatriate the remains of Vietnamese volunteer soldiers and specialists, who fell in Cambodia in the war, until the end of the dry season in 2013.

The agreement was made at the 11 th meeting of the special task force committees of the Vietnamese and Cambodian governments in Phnom Penh , Cambodia , on June 12.

Both spoke highly of the close cooperation shown between the two committees since 2000.

Since 2001, the remains of 14,510 Vietnamese soldiers have been repatriated.

There are still more than 5,000 Vietnamese soldiers buried in Cambodia , of which 1,699 sites of graves have been located.

The delegation from the Vietnamese Government’s Special Task Committee was led by Deputy Defence Minister Senior Lieutenant General Nguyen Thanh Cung while the Cambodian delegation was headed by General Pol Saruon, Commander-in-Chief of the Royal Cambodian Armed Forces.

At the meeting, the Vietnamese side invited a Cambodian Deputy Prime Minister, the Cambodian Government’s Special Task Committee and representatives from Cambodian localities to attend the State conference on the issue, scheduled for October 2012 in Hanoi .

At a reception held for the delegation later the same day, Deputy Prime Minister and Defence Minister Tea Bank stressed that Cambodia considers searching for and repatriating the remains of Vietnamese soldiers and specialists as an honourable task.

He pledged to instruct the Cambodian Government’s Special Task Force Committee and the relevant agencies to facilitate the search during the 2012-2013 dry season and in following years.-VNA