Vietnam is always a reliable partner and an active member in promoting cooperation between Mekong River countries and Japan as well as ties between ASEAN and Japan, Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung has said.

PM Dung told a Vietnam News Agency reporter at a joint press briefing at the end of the first Mekong-Japan Summit in Tokyo on Nov. 7 that the Vietnamese government will close cooperate with the governments of Japan and Mekong countries to realise well the two sides’ agreements in order to make cooperation between the two sides effective, thus contributing to the development and prosperity in the region,

The summit involving Japan and five Mekong nations – Cambodia, Laos, Myanmar, Thailand and Vietnam – adopted the Tokyo Declaration, in which the leaders set long-term development orientations for the Mekong-Japan cooperation mechanism and outlined prioritised fields of cooperation through an action plan.

The 63-point action plan is to specify areas of cooperation between Japan and the five Mekong nations, including infrastructure development, sustainable development and environmental protection, water resource management, response to challenges like poverty, diseases and natural disasters, and people-to-people exchange promotion.

At the summit, the leaders agreed that the Mekong-Japan Summit is held every three years in Japan and in Mekong nations coincided with the ASEAN Summit.

Besides, they decided to make the meetings of foreign ministers and economy ministers annual events.

In 2010, Vietnam as ASEAN Chair ASEAN will host the second Mekong-Japan Summit.

While in Tokyo, PM Nguyen Tan Dung met with the International Friendship Exchange Council (FEC), asking it to continue boosting investment in the North-South Highway, the North-South Express Railway and the Hoa Lac High-tech Park, as well as sending economic missions to Vietnam to inquire into investment, exchange, cultural and economic cooperation between the two countries.

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