General Nguyen Tan Cuong, Chief of the General Staff of the Vietnam People’s Army and Deputy Minister of National Defence (right) had talks with visiting Australian Chief of Navy Vice Admiral Mark Hammond in Hanoi on Jan 30. — VNA/VNS
HANOI: General Nguyen Tan Cuong, Chief of the General Staff of the Vietnam People’s Army and Deputy Minister of National Defence, received Australian Chief of Navy Vice Admiral Mark Hammond in Hanoi on Friday (Jan 30) morning.
At the meeting, Cuong affirmed that Vietnam always attaches importance to its relations with Australia.
The official upgrade of bilateral ties to a Comprehensive Strategic Partnership in March 2024 marked an important milestone, creating favourable conditions to further promote cooperation across various fields, including defence cooperation.
He stressed that in recent years, based on the 2010 memorandum of understanding and the 2018 joint vision statement, the Vietnam-Australia defence cooperation has been actively implemented in many areas, such as delegation exchanges, dialogue and consultations, training, United Nations peacekeeping, cooperation between services and arms, war legacy remediation, and multilateral defence collaboration, particularly within the Asean Defence Ministers’ Meeting Plus framework.
The Vietnamese general highly appreciated the effective cooperation between the navies of the two countries, highlighting activities such as courtesy port visits, participation in dialogue mechanisms, English-language training, and professional exchanges.
Based on the guidance of senior leaders and the defence ministries of both countries, he expressed his hope that the two sides would continue to work closely to further promote joint work among services and arms, and create favourable conditions for bilateral naval cooperation.
Priority areas include promoting delegation exchanges and consultations to enhance mutual understanding and trust, strengthening training cooperation and information and experience sharing, as well as cooperation in search and rescue operations.
On this occasion, Cuong extended an invitation to leaders of the Australian Defence Force and the Royal Australian Navy, as well as Australian defence enterprises, to attend the 3rd Vietnam International Defence Expo.
For his part, Hammond briefed his host on the positive outcomes of recent working sessions between the two navies.
He stressed that 2026 will be an important milestone opening up many opportunities for cooperation between the two defence ministries in general and between the two navies in particular, thereby contributing to the continued development of effective and substantive bilateral relations. — VNA/VNS
