At the event, on behalf of the Party and State leaders, Gen. Giang handed over the order to the department in recognition of the unit’s personnel’s great efforts over the past time.
Over the past six decades of development, the department, with the Department of Foreign Liaison as its predecessor, has been honored with numerous noble awards, including the Hero of the People’s Armed Forces title, First-, Second-, and Third-class Military Exploit Orders, First-, Second-, and Third-class Fatherland Protection Orders, among others.
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Defense Minister, General Phan Van Giang hands over the First-class Military Exploit Order to the Department of Foreign Relations. |
Addressing the event, Defense Minister Giang praised the department for its important attainments gained over the past 60 years. He highlighted the unit’s timely suggestions given to the Central Military Commission and the Ministry of National Defense, its direction over implementation of defense relations, contributing to firmly protecting the nation’s independence, sovereignty, territorial integrity, maintaining the border of peace and friendship, creating favorable conditions to strengthen exchanges, connections, and cooperation for development, deserving to be a leading agency in defense relations in the whole military.
Given complicated and unprecedented developments in the world and regional situations, and higher requirements in defense and military tasks and military building, Gen. Giang asked the department to pro-actively do research, develop solutions to improve the effectiveness of international integration and defense relations, helping safeguard the Fatherland early and from afar and by peaceful means.
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Gen. Phan Van Giang speaks at the event. |
The unit was urged to deepen its strategies and tactics in implementing defense relations work at both bilateral and multilateral levels, be steadfast in principles, flexible in strategy, uphold independence and autonomy in defense relations and cooperation. In addition, it must be consistent in implementing “4 No’s” defense policy and effectively promote defense relations in the three pillars of Party, State, and people-to-people diplomacy.
At the event, the department’s director Major General Vu Thanh Van emphasized important achievements in international integration and defense relations. Particularly, contacts between the leadership of the Vietnamese Ministry of National Defense and its foreign counterparts have taken place regularly. Many important defense cooperation agreements have been signed and effectively realized. In addition, Vietnam has pro-actively participated in forum mechanisms on military and defense cooperation in the region and the world. Attentively, the country’s participation in U.N. peacekeeping operations has been a great milestone. Notably, achievements in international integration and defense relations have importantly contributed to building and maintaining an environment of peace, stability, cooperation, and development with other countries and partners.
In the coming time, the department will further grasp, forecast and evaluate situations, actively give advice on policies and solutions to defense and security issues, and pay attention to building a strong and healthy Party Organization, a comprehensively strong unit and a contingent of competent staff.
Translated by Mai Huong