Vietnam, Cambodia border localities urged to do more for peaceful border

Active coordination and the maintenance of regular and irregular meetings have allowed border localities in Vietnam and Cambodia to implement agreements efficiently, helping to maintain security and stability along the shared border.

Vietnam’s Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Pham Binh Minh (L) and Cambodia’s Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Home Affairs Samdech Sar Kheng co-chair the conference (Photo: VNA)

It was remarked at the ninth Conference on Cooperation and Development of Vietnamese and Cambodian border provinces co-chaired by Vietnam’s Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Pham Binh Minh and Cambodia’s Deputy Prime Minister and Minister of Home Affairs Sar Kheng in Phnom Penh, Cambodia on March 15.

Since the eighth meeting in October 2015, the friendship and all-faceted cooperation between the two countries have developed continuously, the two sides noted.

Local officials paid have regular visits while localities have assisted each other in building roads, training human resources, exchanging high-yield plants, providing healthcare services and conducting cultural and sports activities.

Such activities enabled both sides to address issues that have arisen and to enhance their friendship, solidarity, cooperation and mutual assistance, the participants said.

They agreed to further boost the links between ministries, sectors, and localities, to continue implementing agreements actively, to fine-tune mechanisms and policies encouraging cross-border trade and to make it easier for investment to take place.

The localities will work together in agriculture, forestry and fishery, healthcare and human resources training and pay heed to upgrading transport infrastructure and border trade areas.

They said they will speed up the land border’s demarcation and the planting of border markers while pledging not to allow any hostile force to use the one’s territory to sabotage security and stability in the other.

The localities agreed to reinforce cooperation to protect security and maintain stability and order along the shared border while deterring and combating transnational crime.

More people-to-people exchanges will be organised, as will education for border people, especially the youth, so as to help them to understand the importance of preserving and fostering the two sides’ traditional friendship, solidarity and mutual assistance for the respective interests.

Deputy PMs Pham Binh Minh and Sar Kheng asked ministries, sectors and border localities in the two countries to work more closely in carrying out devised measures to improve the efficiency of their cooperation, to continue to maintain political security and social order, to improve locals’ living standards and to build a border region of peace, friendship, cooperation and development.

During the conference, ministries, sectors and border localities had separate meetings to seek specific cooperative measures.

The two sides issued a joint statement at the end of the conference.

(Source: NDO