Australian Governor-General wraps up State visit to Vietnam

Hanoi (VNA) - Australian Governor-General Peter Cosgrove and his spouse left Ho Chi Minh City on May 26, concluding a State visit to Vietnam from May 23-26 at the invitation of President Tran Dai Quang.

During his stay, the Governor-General had talks with President Tran Dai Quang, and meetings with Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong, Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc, Chairwoman of the National Assembly Nguyen Thi Kim Ngan and Chairman of Ho Chi Minh City People’s Committee Nguyen Thanh Phong. He visited the level-2 field hospital No. 1, based at the Military Hospital 175 in Ho Chi Minh City.

At the meetings, both sides expressed their delight over the sound and effective development of the bilateral ties. They agreed to continue with activities to mark the 45th anniversary of the diplomatic ties and raise two peoples’ awareness of the Vietnam-Australia relations.

Regarding the orientation for the strategic partnership in the coming time, they reached consensus on consolidating political trust and strategic faith through enhancing delegation exchanges, improving efficiency of existing bilateral cooperative mechanisms while setting up new cooperative frameworks like economic partnership, agricultural partnership, innovative partnership and meeting at foreign ministerial level.

They laid stress on the efforts to deepen pillar cooperative sectors: security-defence, economy-trade, science-technology, education-training and development assistance, saying that they will serve as levers to boost collaboration in other potential fields.

Both sides will create favourable conditions for their airlines to operate more direct flights between big cities and encourage citizens to involve in the Vietnam-Australia Work and Holiday programme.

They affirmed to support each other at the regional and international forums, especially at the UN, ASEAN and mechanism led by ASEAN. They pledged to coordinate stances regarding the East Sea issue and cooperate closely to implement the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP).-VNA