Deputy Foreign Minister and Chairman of the State Committee for Overseas Vietnamese Affairs Nguyen Thanh Son made the remarks while receiving the ITAR-TASS delegation, led by its Deputy General Director Klein Aleksandr Orestovich, in Hanoi on October 19.

He expressed his hope that with the cooperative agreement between VNA and ITAR-TASS signed in August 2008, the two national news agencies will usher in a new stage of development to provide the latest information on the land and people of Vietnam and Russia.

For his part, the ITAR-TAS Deputy General Director affirmed that maintaining effective cooperation between the two news agencies will play a key role in developing bilateral ties.

On October 14, the Russian guests held talks with a VNA delegation led by Deputy General Director Ha Minh Hue.

The two sides expressed great satisfaction with their bilateral cooperation in the information sector over the past time, which has helped to strengthen each other’s profile on the international information scene, and further the friendship and strategic partnership between the two countries.

The two sides agreed to expand their cooperation into other fields besides information exchange such as publishing the Vietnam Pictorial in Russia, increasing photo exchanges, teaching the Russian language to VNA correspondents and jointly organising photo exhibitions in each country.

VNA looks forward to its Russian counterpart providing multi-media information for its television channel, which is expected to make its debut in the near future.