US Secretary of State holds talks with Deputy PM
VOV.VN - US Secretary of State John Kerry on May 24 at talks with Deputy Prime Minister Pham Binh Minh confirmed that Vietnam and the US are cooperating on security issues and that their militaries are in frequent contact.
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The US government does not take sides on the legal merits of these claims, said Mr Kerry, but we believe strongly that they should be settled peacefully and in accordance with international law and not unilaterally by any country seeking to assert hegemony over its neighbours.
In addition, the two leaders said Vietnam and the US will continue cooperating on other security matters such as the new training centre for the People’s Army of Vietnam on the outskirts of Hanoi, that the US helped establish, where young Vietnamese soldiers will prepare for service in United Nations-sponsored peacekeeping missions.
The final lesson of the war that ended nearly a half century ago, said Mr Kerry, is that with sufficient effort and will seemingly unbridgeable differences can be reconciled.
The fact that Mr Obama is the third consecutive US President to visit Vietnam is proof that old enemies can become new partners.
We have reached the point, said Mr Kerry, more than 20 years after normalization of relations between the two former enemies, when our agenda with Vietnam is forward-looking and wide-ranging.
Mr Obama’s discussions with the Vietnamese during our visit have covered issues from security cooperation to trade and investment to education, and from the environment to freedom of religion and human rights.
This wider agenda reflects changes to the relationship that are well underway. Twenty years ago, there were fewer than 60,000 American visitors annually to Vietnam. Today, there are nearly half a million.
Twenty years ago, our bilateral trade in goods with Vietnam was only US$450 million. Today, it is 100 times that. Twenty years ago, there were fewer than 1,000 Vietnamese students in the US. Today, there are nearly 19,000.
More remarkably, the Vietnamese Politburo includes two people who earned graduate degrees in the US while on Fulbright scholarships. It’s appropriate, therefore, that this week, a new institution of higher learning will open in Ho Chi Minh City: Fulbright University Vietnam.
I am proud to serve as chairman of the university’s board, said Mr Kerry.
Looking to the future, we know that mutual interests, above all else, will drive our partnership with Vietnam. But it is strengthened, as well, by the natural affinities between our societies.
These include family ties, a tendency toward optimism, a fierce desire for freedom and independence and a hard-earned appreciation that peace is far, far preferable to war.
