Vietnamese Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Do Hung Viet and Major General Vu Cuong Quyet, Director of the Ministry of National Defence's Institute for Defence Strategy, co-chaired the event together with Australia’s Deputy Secretary of the Department of Foreign Affairs Michelle Chan and Deputy Secretary of the Department of Defence Hugh Jeffrey.
At the dialogue, the two sides noted with pleasure that the two nations have recorded fruitful development in the bilateral relations since they established their diplomatic ties 50 years years ago, especially after the relationship was upgraded to a strategic partnership in March 2018. They reaffirmed their countries’ importance in each other’s foreign policies.
Participants reviewed and agreed on major directions to strengthen the strategic partnership in a practical, effective and comprehensive manner in the coming time, especially in pillar areas such as politics, security - defence, economy - trade - investment, science - technology, and emerging and potential fields of common concern, including climate change response, energy transition and digital transformation.
They agreed to continue promoting the exchange of delegations and meetings at all levels; implementing activities to celebrate the 50th founding anniversary of the diplomatic relations in both countries, especially those to promote people-to-people exchanges, culture, cooperation connection; as well as effectively maintaining cooperation mechanisms in order to further strengthen political trust and seek more cooperation opportunities.
The two sides also shared information and views on about strategic issues, and regional and global situations, including Asia-Pacific regional architecture, Mekong sub-regional cooperation.
They agreed to foster cooperation at multilateral forums such as the United Nations, ASEAN and ASEAN-led mechanisms, including the East Asia Summit (EAS), the ASEAN Defence Ministers' Meeting Plus (ADMM ), the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum, and the Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM).
Australia affirmed that it will keep working closely with ASEAN and supporting the bloc’s efforts in strengthening intra-bloc solidarity, narrowing the development gap, and promoting ASEAN's central role in the rules-based regional architecture.
Regarding the East Sea/South China Sea issue, Australia reaffirmed its support for settling disputes in the sea by peaceful measures in line with international law, including the 1982 United Nations Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS), stressing that relevant parties should maintain security, safety and freedom of navigation and aviation in the sea, seriously implement the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the East Sea (DOC), and promote negotiations on building an effective, practical and legally-binding Code of Conduct in the East Sea (COC).
The two sides agreed to organise the 9th diplomatic – defence strategic dialogue at the deputy ministerial level at an appropriate time in Australia.
