Officials at the opening ceremony of the competency evaluation programme for prospective UN peacekeepers in Hanoi on September 13. (Photo: VNA)
Hanoi (VNA) – A ceremony was held in Hanoi on September 13 to open the competency evaluation programme for prospective United Nations peacekeepers (CEPPP) under the ASEAN Defence Ministers’ Meeting Plus (ADMM-Plus) Experts’ Working Group on Peacekeeping Operations. The opening ceremony was attended by representatives of the Ministry of National Defence, the embassies and military attachés of the ADMM-Plus countries in Vietnam, the ASEAN Secretariat, and 18 delegations of the ADMM-Plus countries (Australia, Brunei, Cambodia, China, India, Indonesia, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, New Zealand, the Philippines, the Republic of Korea, Russia, Singapore, Thailand, the US, Vietnam, and Japan).
Addressing the event, Sen. Lt. Gen. Phung Si Tan, Deputy Chief of the General Staff of the Vietnam People’s Army, said the programme drew the participation of nearly 300 experts, trainees, and observers from ADMM-Plus members. It is the last activity of the ADMM-Plus Experts’ Working Group on Peacekeeping Operations Cycle 4 (2021 - 2023) under the co-chairmanship of Vietnam and Japan.
This is the first time Vietnam has hosted such a large-scale multilateral activity on UN peacekeeping operations, helping affirm the country’s role, stature, and contributions to multilateral cooperation mechanisms on UN peacekeeping operations in the region and within the ADMM-Plus framework, he emphasised.
Co-chairing the Experts’ Working Group on Peacekeeping Operations Cycle 4, Col. Nguyen Nhu Canh, Deputy Director of the Vietnam Department of Peacekeeping Operations under the Ministry of National Defence, and Matsuzawa Tomoko, Director for Defence Cooperation in the Indo-Pacific region at the Japanese Ministry of Defence and head of the Japanese experts’ working group, affirmed that the two sides have coordinated closely and obtained targets of the events they jointly organised, including the CEPPP.
The CEPPP closing ceremony is slated for September 21./.
VNA