NA well performs parliamentary diplomacy: NA Vice Chairwoman

Hanoi (VNA) – The National Assembly has well performed parliamentary diplomacy, thus contributing to consolidating and developing Vietnam’s relations with its traditional friends, neighbours, and strategic and comprehensive partners such as Laos, Cuba, Cambodia, China, Russia, the US, India, Japan, the Republic of Korea and other Southeast Asian nations.

The assessment was made by Standing NA Vice Chairwoman Tong Thi Phong at a sum-up conference of the NA Committee for External Relations in the 2016-2021 tenure on March 25 within the framework of the 14th NA’s 11th session.

Phong said that in the context of difficulties caused by the COVID-19 pandemic, the legislature’s external affairs have been carried out in line with the Party’s guiding viewpoint on foreign policy.

With its coordinating role, the NA Committee for External Relations has promoted activities of the Friendship Parliamentarians’ Organisation and the Young National Assembly Deputies’ Group, and closely coordinated with the Group of Vietnamese Women Parliamentarians in diverse forms and with rich contents.

The committee also recommended the NA to propose the introduction of a Female Parliamentarians’ Conference into the framework of the Asia-Pacific Parliamentary Forum (APPF), and a Youth Parliamentarians’ Conference in the ASEAN Inter-Parliamentary Assembly (AIPA) General Assembly framework annually.

The legislature’s external affairs have become an important part of the Party and State’s external relations, she affirmed.

Speaking at the conference, head of the NA Committee for External Relations Nguyen Van Giau reported that over the past years, the committee had chaired the assessment of a draft law revising and supplementing several articles to the Law on Overseas Representative Missions of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam, and the Law on International Agreements, before them were submitted to the NA for approval.

It has also made evaluation of nine important international treaties before submitting them to the NA for ratification, including the Comprehensive and Progressive Agreement for Trans-Pacific Partnership (CPTPP), the EU-Vietnam Free Trade Agreement, the ILO Convention 98 on the Right to Organise and Collective Bargaining and the ILO Convention 105 on Abolition of Forced Labour, and four international treaties on border demarcation between Vietnam and Laos, and between Vietnam and Cambodia./.