Active coordination and the maintenance of regular and irregular meetings have allowed border localities of Vietnam and Cambodia to deploy reached agreements efficiently, helping maintain security and stability in the shared border.

Vietnam’s Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Pham Binh Minh (L) and Cambodia’s Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Home Affairs Samdech Sar Kheng co-chair the conference

It was remarked at the ninth Conference on Cooperation and Development of Vietnamese and Cambodian border provinces co-chaired by Vietnam’s Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Pham Binh Minh and Cambodia’s Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Home Affairs Samdech Sar Kheng in Phnom Penh, Cambodia on March 15.

Since the eighth meeting in October 2015, the friendship and all-faceted cooperation between the two countries have continuously developed, the two sides noted.

Local officials paid regular visits while localities have assisted each other in building roads, training human resources, exchanging high-yield plants, providing healthcare services, and conducting cultural and sports activities.

Such activities enabled both sides to address arising issues and enhance their friendship, solidarity, cooperation and mutual assistance, the participants said.

They agreed to further boost the links between ministries, sectors, and localities, continue implementing reached agreements actively, fine-tune mechanisms and policies encouraging cross-border trade, and make it easier for respective investments.

The localities will work together in agriculture, forestry and fishery, healthcare, and human resources training, and pay heed to upgrading transport infrastructure and border trade areas.

They said they will speed up the land border demarcation and the planting of border markers while pledging to not allow any hostile force to use the one’s territory to sabotage security and stability in the other.

The localities agreed to reinforce cooperation to protect security, keep stability and order along the shared border while timely deterring and combating transnational crimes.

More people-to-people exchanges will be organized, as will education for border people, especially the youth, so to help them to understand the importance of preserving and fostering the traditional friendship, solidarity and mutual assistance for the respective interests.

Deputy PMs Pham Binh Minh and Samdech Sar Kheng asked ministries, sectors and border localities of the two countries to work more closely in carrying out devised measures to improve the efficiency of their cooperation, continue maintain political security and social order, improve locals’ living standards, and building the borderline of peace, friendship, cooperation and development.

During the conference, ministries, sectors and border localities had separate meetings to seek specific cooperative measures.

The two sides issued a joint statement at the end of the conference.

VNA