Police officers from Vietnam and Laos gathered at a conference in Ho Chi Minh City on April 22 to discuss measures to boost cooperation in fighting crimes and ensuring social safety and order.

Deputy Minister of Public Security Lieut. Gen. Pham Quy Ngo, Chief of the General Department for Anti-Crime Police Major Gen. Phan Van Vinh of Vietnam and Chief of the Police General Department under the Public Security Ministry of Laos, Colonel Sisavath Keomalavong, attended the event.

Participants reviewed the recent cooperation in fighting crime and ensuring social safety and order in areas along the two countries’ common border and discussed measures to boost cooperative ties in 2011.

This year, the police forces of Vietnam and Laos will focus on implementing agreements signed between the two governments and ministries on related work and boost cooperation to promptly deal with complex cases of fighting crime and ensuring social safety and order.

They also agreed to enhance the exchange of experience and information in the field, as well as continue to organise training courses.

Speaking at the conference, Ngo said that in implementing commitments between the two police forces at the previous conference in Vientiane in March 2010, Vietnamese and Lao police obtained remarkable achievements.

Over the past year, the police forces, especially police in localities along the common borderline, exchanged information and coordinated to settle many drug, economic and human trafficking crimes. They also worked together closely to prevent illegal migration and receive repatriated people.

Ngo affirmed that this effective cooperation contributed to ensuring social safety and order and building the common border area into a border of peace and friendship as well as enhancing comprehensive cooperative ties between the two ministries and countries.

He expressed his hope that the cooperation between the two police forces would be further developed and those relations would be built into a model for cooperation in ASEANPOL.

Colonel Sisavath Keomalavong expressed his belief that agreements reached at the conference would be a foundation for the two sides to help each other in fighting crime and ensuring social safety and order./.