PANO – Over the past years, the Vietnam People’s Navy has thoroughly grasped the Party and State’s policies and the National Defence Ministry’s guidelines to actively and proactively carry out external affairs on defence, and achieved many encouraging results.
In November 2011, the Navy successfully hosted the fifth ASEAN Naval Chiefs’ Meeting, themed “ASEAN naval cooperation for maritime peace and security”, in Hanoi.
During the event, the unit’s initiatives in establishing a hot line among ASEAN Navies, sending greetings between ASEAN ships at sea and airplanes in flight, and organizing exchanges for ASEAN young naval officers were highly valued by the participants.
Especially, the port calls of ship exchanges paved the way for the establishment of the multi-national Conduct for Unplanned Encounters at Sea (CUES) signed at the 14th Western Pacific Naval Symposium in Qingdao, China, in April 2014.
Troops of Naval Region 3 welcome officers on HMS Daring of the British Royal Navy at Tien Sa port in Da Nang city on December 18th 2013. Photo: qdnd.vn
As the symposium’s member since 1994, the Navy has effectively made contributions to its success, helping to boost the mutual understanding between the Vietnam People’s Navy and other ASEAN naval forces.
Besides, the Vietnam People’s Navy actively participated in international seminars and forums on marine security and marine environment protection; exchanges with naval schools; search and rescue mission; anti-terrorism; and joint naval exercises as an observer.
In March 2014, Vietnam sent hospital ship HQ-561 to join the 2014 Komodo multilateral naval exercise between ASEAN and its eight dialogue partners in Indonesia, mobilized vessels and airplanes to search for the missing MH370 airplane, and assigned a team with Singaporean naval ships to the counter-terror naval exercise in the Gulf of Aden.
These above activities contributed to improving the mutual understanding among naval forces in the region and the world, as well as heightening the position of the Vietnam People’s Navy on the international arena.
The Vietnam People’s Navy annually sends dozens of delegations to hold talks with other navies, and also welcomes many missions from countries’ navies and defence minitries to Vietnam.
In order to promote cooperation and relationship and ensure stability and peace in the region, the Vietnam People’s Navy inked agreements on joint patrol with navies of China, Thailand and Cambodia, and eight cooperation agreements with other sides.
Each year, tens of naval ships from the countries worldwide dock at ports of Ho Chi Minh City, Da Nang and Hai Phong cities, and present specialized equipment worth tens of millions of USD to the Vietnamese Navy. Vessels and officers of the Vietnam People’s Navy visit China, Singapore, Malaysia, Cambodia and Thailand.
The Vietnam People’s Navy helped the Royal Cambodian Navy build infirmaries and naval schools, and repair vessels, enhancing the two sides’ relations.
Through defence external relations activities, the Vietnamese Navy has implemented an array of projects to modernize its weapons and equipment, upgrade and build new ships, and study experience of building naval forces from other countries to strengthen its units, especially new ones like the Air-Force Naval and Submarine Units.
In addition, its troops have improved their professionalism through training courses in Russia, France, Singapore, New Zealand, Australia, India and Canada.
Translated by Van Hieu
Đăng ký: VietNam News