Senior Lieutenant General Nguyen Chi Vinh, permanent member of the Central Military Commission and Deputy Defense Minister, chaired the event which saw the attendance of leaders from the Party Central Committee’s Commission for External Relations and the Ministry of Foreign Affairs.
Last year, the MND successfully organized numerous ASEAN-led defense-military activities, putting forth goals, initiatives, and priorities while ensuring national interests and manifesting Vietnam’s cohesive and responsive and leading role as the ASEAN Chair 2020.
These activities’ outcomes included the issuance of the joint statement of ASEAN Defense Ministers on defense cooperation in disease response at the ASEAN Defense Ministers’ Meeting (ADMM) Retreat, approval of Vietnam’s concept document on flying the ASEAN flag alongside ASEAN member countries’ flags at U.N. peacekeeping missions, the signing of a joint declaration on ADMM Plus’s strategic security vision. These helped raised Vietnam’s position and prestige in the defense cooperation mechanism between ASEAN and the bloc’s partners.
At the meeting, delegates agreed that these activities were implemented in line with the Party’s and State’s foreign policy and met the targets set by Vietnam in its ASEAN Chairmanship Year.
They also agreed that the military’s effective performance of international integration policy and defense diplomacy amid the complicated developments of the COVID-19 has brought about important achievements, directly contributing to firmly safeguarding the nation’s independence, sovereignty, and territorial integrity and to maintaining an environment of peace, stability for national development. This has also made contributions to boosting bilateral and multilateral cooperation to help build a revolutionary, standardized, elite, and gradually modernized military. It also helps consolidate the strategic trust between Vietnam and its partners, as well as to raise the country’s and military’s position and prestige in the international arena.
Regarding key missions related to international integration and defense diplomacy for this year, delegates reached a consensus on promoting defense cooperation in an active, proactive, flexible and effective manner, solidifying outcomes of the ASEAN Year 2020, and increasing Vietnam’s participation in U.N. peacekeeping operations in both scope and scale. In the short-term, Vietnam will be ready to deploy its Level-2 Field Hospital (L2FH) Rotation 3 to replace the L2FH Rotation 2 and an engineering team at the U.N. mission in South Sudan upon the U.N.’s request.
Addressing the event, General Vinh applauded defense agencies and military units’ all-out efforts in engaging in ASEAN-led military-defense activities and in performing international integration and defense diplomacy tasks. He highlighted the bright spots in their task performance as well.
General Vinh also noted that in a recent meeting of the Central Military Commission, Party General Secretary, State President, and Secretary of the Central Military Commission Nguyen Phu Trong urged the military to improve its international integration and defense diplomacy services this year. Therefore, Lich hoped the military will reap more outcomes in the work, contributing to national peace and stability.
Translated by Mai Huong