Vietnamese Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Nguyen Quoc Dung (right) hands over the Friendship Order toOutgoing Australian Ambassador to Vietnam Craig Chittick.

Addressing the event, Vietnamese DeputyMinister of Foreign Affairs Nguyen Quoc Dung lauded the ambassador’s active andsignificant contributions to developing the Vietnam-Australia relationship in amore trust-worthy, practical and effective manner, especially the establishmentof the bilateral strategic partnership in March 2018.

He also acknowledged Chittick’s effortsin organising many high-level visits and meetings between the two countries, aswell as bilateral cooperation mechanisms at both central and grassroots levels.

The diplomat has helped to step up cooperationin different spheres, especially national defence and security, trade,development cooperation, education-training and people-to-people exchanges, aswell as collaboration between the foreign ministries of the two countries, Dungsaid.

For his part, the ambassador pledgedthat in any position, he will make greater efforts to contribute to enhancingthe Australia-Vietnam strategic partnership.-VNA