He made thestatement during a bilateral meeting with General Chansamone Chanyalath, DefenceMinister of Laos in Bangkok, Thailand on July 10 within the framework of the 13th ASEAN Defence Ministers’ Meeting.
Chanyalathaffirmed that Laos supports Vietnam in its role as ASEAN Chair 2020.
Both sidesstressed that the strengthening of bilateral defence ties at present is vitalto the two nations’ revolutionary cause.
As the twocountries will review the implementation of the Protocol for the 2015-2019period and devise another one for 2020-2024 this year, they will point outexisting shortcomings so as to make defence ties a pillar in bilateralrelationship.
Apart fromeffectively tapping existing cooperation mechanisms, the two ministers vowedjoint work to raise public awareness of traditional friendship and specialsolidarity between the two nations and armies.
They agreedto assign the two nations’ general political departments to build plans to holdmajor events during the year, pay attention to repairing, maintaining andbuilding works that are symbols of the two countries and armies.-VNA