Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc and US President Donald Trump expressed their satisfaction at the increasingly substantive developments in the countries’ relations during their meeting in Hanoi on February 27.

Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc (R) meets with US President Donald Trump in Hanoi on February 27

PM Phuc welcomed President Trump and his entourage on their visit to Vietnam and lauded the significance of the second summit between the US and the Democratic People’s Republic of Korea (DPRK) in promoting the denuclearisation and making sustainable peace on the Korean Peninsula. He also applauded the US and the DPRK’s choosing of Vietnam as the venue for their important summit.

The leader affirmed that Vietnam always attaches importance to the comprehensive partnership with the US in its foreign policy of independence, self-reliance, multilateralisation and diversification of foreign relations, and active integration into the world in the principle of respecting each other’s independence, sovereignty, territorial integrity and political regimes.

President Trump expressed his delight at meeting PM Phuc and visiting Vietnam again. He thanked Vietnam for its considerate support for the US-DPRK summit despite the short period of time for preparation.

At the meeting, the two sides shared the view that bilateral relations have been growing substantively in many fields, from politics-diplomacy, security-defence, education-training, to the settlement of war consequences. Notably, bilateral trade topped 60 billion USD in 2018 with the US’s exports to Vietnam surging by 46 percent, making the Southeast Asian nation one of the fastest growing markets of the US.

To promote the economic-trade upward trend, they agreed to keep implementing existing cooperation mechanisms like the Vietnam-US Bilateral Trade Agreement and the Trade and Investment Framework Agreement.

The two sides will also continue discussing the possibility of upgrading the framework of bilateral trade-investment ties to match the development of their economic-trade relations and the nature of the comprehensive partnership, they added.

President Trump highly valued Vietnam’s active settlement of some prioritised trade issues, affirming his strong support for cooperation in this field for the sake of the two peoples.

The leaders also exchanged views on some regional issues of shared concern. They voiced their support for the peaceful settlement of disputes in the East Sea in accordance with international law, including the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea, the respect for all diplomatic and legal processes, the effective and full implementation of the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the East Sea, and the early signing of a Code of Conduct in the waters.-VNA