State President Nguyen Minh Triet received visiting New Zealand Prime Minister John Key in Hanoi on July 12.

President Triet affirmed PM Key’s visit as a great contribution to deepening bilateral ties and expressed his strong optimistm about the future of the friendship and cooperation between Vietnam and New Zealand.

He expressed thanks to New Zealand for its assistance to Vietnam, especially in poverty reduction and training in the English language.

President Triet praised New Zealand’s role in regional and international arenas and expressed his belief that the ASEAN-Australia- New Zealand Free Trade Agreement would bring active results and open up numerous opportunities in trade and investment.

He proposed that New Zealand support Vietnam in negotiations to participate in the Trans-Pacific Strategic Economic Partnership Agreement (TPP). He stressed that ASEAN, including Vietnam, highly valued New Zealand’s position in the region.

For his part, PM Key said New Zealand wished to continue cooperating with Vietnam, especially in development assistance and training in English, and added that the two economies had many complementary aspects.

He asked PM, John Key to convey his invitation to the Governor-General of New Zealand, Anand Satyanand to visit Vietnam.

The same day, Truong Tan Sang, Party Politburo Member and standing member of the Party Central Committee’s Secretariat, had an exchange of views with the New Zealand PM.

He praised the New Zealand Government’s efforts in driving its economy to overcome the global crisis and asked New Zealand to expand cooperation in areas of the two countries’ joint potential, including agriculture, seafood and foodstuff processing, environment, tourism and labour.

He also asked New Zealand to continue to assist Vietnam with its international integration.

Sang stressed that Vietnam always attach importance to relations with New Zealand and said the signing of a plan of action to formalise the comprehensive partnership between the two countries would be a driving force to bring bilateral cooperation into practice.

He expressed his wish to boost ties between the Communist Party of Vietnam and the New Zealand ruling National Party and other political parties.

PM Key affirmed that New Zealand would continue to give priority to official development assistance to Vietnam, support Vietnam to join the Trans-Pacific Partnership, and want Vietnam would support New Zealand to be a non-permanent member of the UN Security Council.

He also said he will attend the Summit between ASEAN and its dialogue partners to be held in Hanoi in October this year./.