The state visit to India by Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong from November 19-22 drew special international attention because this visit not only took place at a time when the two countries successfully organized the Vietnam-India Friendship Year on the occasion of the 40th anniversary of diplomatic ties and the 5th anniversary of the establishment of the comprehensive strategic partnership, but also had an important significance in promoting and deepening the strategic partnership between the two countries, particularly in the fields of national defence-security and economy-trade.

During this visit, Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong talked with Indian President Pranab Mukherjee, Vice President Shri Hamid Ansari and Indian Speaker of the Low House Meira Kumar. He also received Indian Foreign Minister Salman Khurshid and leaders of some parties in India. Party General Secretary had talks with Indian Prime Minister Mamonhan Singh.

During their talks, Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong and Prime Minister Manmohan Singh expressed their pleasure at fine development of the bilateral relations over the past 40 years since the two countries established a comprehensive strategic partnership in 2007.

The political relations between the two countries have been fostered with regular exchanges of high-ranking delegations. The economic and trade cooperation has also seen considerable development. In 2012, bilateral trade turnover reached nearly 4 billion USD and about 4 billion USD in the first 9 months of 2013. At present, India has 74 projects in Vietnam.

They reached consensus on concrete steps to promote cooperation in the five pillars of the strategic partnership. Accordingly, the two nations will strengthen the close and trustworthy political ties as an important foundation for their relationship while increasing all-level visits in the future in order to bolster friendship and mutual trust.

Both sides will maintain and promote the current effective cooperative mechanisms in diplomacy, defence and security, expand and increase the effectiveness in other fields and strengthen cooperation among parties, national assemblies, sectors, localities, peoples and youths between the two nations.

Both sides stressed that national defence and security links will continue being a key pillar in the Vietnam-India strategic partnership so both sides will actively build specific cooperation mechanism in the field of military, expand cooperation in defence industry, technology transfer, production for the defence task, graduate and post graduate training and education in military where India has strength in and exchange information about anti-teritorism, pirates, trans-national crimes and high tech crimes.

In terms of economy, the two sides agreed to strongly and practically boost economic and trade cooperation to match bilateral potentials and aspirations.

The two countries will make efforts to implement the agreements reached at the 15th meeting of their joint committee on economy, trade and science and technology cooperation, with the aim of bringing two-way trade turnover to 7 billion USD in 2015, and targeting 15 billion USD in 2020.

They also agreed to maintain and expand cooperation in oil and gas exploration and exploitation in Vietnam’s territorial waters in the East Sea.

At the meeting, General Secretary Trong and the India PM also discussed regional and international issues of mutual concern.

Both sides reached a consensus that Asia-Pacific is a dynamic region but there are many factors that can cause instability, with territory and land and islands disputes, religious extremism and nationalism seeing complicated development. The situation requires related countries and the international community to raise their responsibility and strive to ensure peace, territorial sovereignty and security for all the countries and maintain an environment of peace, stability, cooperation and development in the region.

The leaders agreed that all disputes in the East Sea should be settled by peaceful means, in line with international law, including the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS.)

Following their talks, the two leaders held a joint press conference and witnessed the signing of eight cooperation documents, namely the Air Service Agreement, an MoU on the establishment of the Indira Gandhi Hi-tech Crime Lab in Hanoi, an agreement on Protection of Classified Information, an MoU between two Ministries of Finance, a cooperation agreement between Hanoi National University and Indian Council for Scientific and Industrial Research, an MoU on cooperation between India Institute of Management (IIM) Bangalore and Ho Chi Minh National Academy of Public Administration, an MoU between Vietnam Oil and Gas Group and ONGC Videsh Limited (OVL), and an MOU between the Vietnamese Ministry of Industry and Trade and Tata Power Ltd. on the development of the 1,320MW Long Phu 2 Thermal Power Project in Soc Trang province, Vietnam.

VNP/VNA