Wednesday, 8 October 2008

Viet Nam, Cambodia agree on co-operation, border marking

07-10-2008)

DA NANG — Viet Nam and Cambodia have agreed to focus on co-operating in areas that the two countries are good at while continuing to speed up work on border markers.

This was decided at the tenth meeting of the Viet Nam-Cambodia Joint Committee for Economic, Cutural, Scientific and Technological Co-operation held in Da Nang City yesterday.

In attendance was Deputy Prime Minister cum Foreign Minister Pham Gia Khiem, chairman of the Vietnamese sub-committee, and his Cambodian counterpart, Hor Namhong.

Khiem told his guest that the meeting was taking place at a time when relations between Viet Nam and Cambodia had been developing well in economy, politics, culture, national defence and security.

Yet much remained to be done to make the two sides’ co-operation more comprehensive and effective, he said.

The two sides decided to give priority to developing human training, infrastructure construction, trade-investment, energy, transport, healthcare, mining, oil and gas, cash crops and seafood processing.

They agreed to create favourable conditions for trade and services activities in an attempt to raise the two countries’ trade turnover to more than US$2 billion by 2010.

They also want to strengthen co-operation in agriculture and encourage businesses in the two countries to invest in building hydro-electricity plants, exploit and develop oil and gas and telecommunications services.

The two deputy prime ministers examined the upgrade of some international border gates to pave the way for economic and cultural exchanges between two countries and between localities in border areas.

They agreed to continue co-operating on national defence and security, anti-trans-national crimes and joint naval patrols.

The meeting reviewed the implementation of agreements obtained at the ninth Joint Committee meeting.

Meeting participants heard work on planting border markers had been sped up in order to complete marking the border between the two countries by 2012.

It was noted that some projects agreed to at the ninth meeting were being implemented at snail speed and had to speed up.

Cambodian Deputy Prime Minister Hor Namhong said the tenth meeting was a favourable condition for future co-operation.

He said he believed it would be a new step to meet the desires of leaders and people of both sides.

The eleventh meeting will be held in Cambodia next year.

— VNS

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