VLADIMIR PUTIN
ARCHIVE OF THE OFFICIAL SITE
OF THE 2008-2012 PRIME MINISTER
OF THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION
VLADIMIR PUTIN
ARCHIVE OF THE OFFICIAL SITE
OF THE 2008-2012 PRIME MINISTER
OF THE RUSSIAN FEDERATION
VLADIMIR PUTIN
Transcript of the beginning of the meeting:
Vladimir Putin: Ladies and gentlemen,
We have just completed our talks with Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung. Discussions between Vietnam and Russia have traditionally been based on trust and mutual respect. Our two peoples have felt sincere sympathy for each other for many decades. We have stood together with Vietnam both in the difficult war years and in the period of peaceful development.
We rely on this firm foundation today as we develop our close relations. We are proud of our common legacy and are continuing it together.
Our strategic partnership has been become closer recently, and today's meeting bears this out. We have discussed a wide range of bilateral issues down to the most minute details with the Prime Minister, and together we have mapped out serious plans for the future.
It is indicative that bilateral trade continues to grow even despite the global economic and financial crisis. This year we will surpass the $1.5 billion mark.
This steady trend indicates great potential. I am very grateful to the Prime Minister, who took the initiative some time ago and telephoned me to outline a number of promising directions of our relations. Before long our Vietnamese and Russian colleagues had drafted a number of very important documents. They are of practical value not only for the economy, but also for defence cooperation.
The documents signed today open up more opportunities for bilateral business contacts. In the joint memorandum that came out of the talks we have consolidated agreements on key aspects of our economic, humanitarian and defence cooperation.
Gazprom and Petrovietnam have signed an agreement on strategic cooperation that will bring about closer ties in the oil and gas industry. It provides for the implementation of joint projects in Russia, Vietnam and third-party countries.
We have amassed a wealth of experience in the energy industry. Our joint venture Vietsovpetro is one of the world's leading oil and gas companies in output and, importantly, financial viability.
We are successfully developing our relations in the electrical power industry. In the 1970s and 1980s this country helped Vietnam build thermal and hydroelectric power stations with an overall capacity of more than 4,000 megawatts. It would be no exaggeration to say that these power stations now form the backbone of Vietnam's electrical power industry.
Nowadays Russian companies such as Silovye Mashiny are building new electricity generating facilities in Vietnam.
Russian companies are developing the Vietnamese electrical power industry, while our Vietnamese partners guarantee purchase orders for our companies that produce electricity-generating facilities. New partners are joining in.
Today Rosatom (The State Atomic Energy Corporation) and Inter RAO UES signed a memorandum of understanding with their Vietnamese friends. In future this agreement will allow them to develop full-scale relations in such a promising area as the civilian nuclear industry. We are ready to help our Vietnamese partners in implementing their national programme for the development of the nuclear power industry until 2020.
Our cooperation also looks promising in the banking and financial sectors, high technology, communications and telecommunications. The joint venture GTel Mobile, which includes Russian VympelKom, is a successful mobile phone operator. And yesterday a Vietnamese-Russian bank opened a subsidiary in Moscow.
We have also done well in mechanical engineering. The KamAZ Truck Plant is a leader here and continues to be active in the Vietnamese market despite tough competition. It has already produced more than 1,500 trucks in Vietnam.
Therefore, I would like to note that the level of political understanding and the positive past experiences have had a very good effect on our cooperation. Nevertheless, our work together is based on strictly market relations. We are capable of finding compromises and balancing our interests.
The constructive and businesslike atmosphere of the talks attests to our mutual trust and reciprocal efforts to develop fruitful cooperation and strategic dialogue.
I would like to thank all our Vietnamese friends and the Prime Minister for today's productive work.
Thank you for your attention.
Nguyễn Tấn Dũng (as translated): Prime Minister Putin, my dear Russian and Vietnamese friends,
I am very glad to inform you that the Prime Minister and my talks were very successful and based on strategic partnership and brotherly friendship, with the highest level of mutual trust and mutual understanding.
We discussed and are in full agreement that strategic partnership and multilateral cooperation between Vietnam and Russia are very good and are developing well in all areas, including in politics, economics, trade, science and technology, culture, defence and security, education and others.
The leaders of both countries have forged close working contacts on an equitable basis, based on mutual benefit, cooperation and helping one another.
We discussed the issues in detail and arrived at a common view on all the main ones. We also identified specific measures for the continued development of our relations based on the long-term and mutual development of both countries.
Our two countries have agreed to continue our good political relations by exchanging delegations, including at the highest level. The Russian leadership welcomes and anticipates the visit of Nông Đức Mạnh, General Secretary of the Communist Party of Vietnam, who will visit Russia in the first quarter of 2010. Russia has also invited the President of Vietnam to the celebrations of the 65th anniversary since the victory in World War II.
Vietnam anticipates and gladly invites Russian President Dmitry Medvedev to visit Vietnam and attend the second Russian-ASEAN summit in Hanoi in late 2010.
Russia and Vietnam will also celebrate the 60th anniversary of the establishment of diplomatic relations between our countries (January 1950 - January 2010).
Our two countries will also increase investment and trade in order to boost bilateral trade to $10 billion in the next few years.
And the governments of both countries have decided to charge all relevant ministries and government agencies with negotiating the establishment of a free trade zone to foster favourable conditions for trade between our two countries and helping Vietnam reduce the trade imbalance in our trade relations.
Vietnam will provide favourable conditions for Russian businesses to attract Russian investment to such areas as energy, oil, electronics and telecommunications.
And, in turn, Russia will also provide favourable conditions for Vietnamese goods to be imported directly into the Russian market and through the Russian market into other regional markets.
Our two countries will henceforth strengthen and expand their cooperation in traditional areas such as education, personnel training, science, technology, culture, medicine and tourism.
Our two countries have agreed to establish a branch of a Russian university in Vietnam. And in the future we intend to sign an agreement for the recognition each other's diplomas.
As of 2010, Russia will provide Vietnam with more than 300 scholarships to study in Russia.
Dear friends, Prime Minister Putin and I have had a detailed discussion based on mutual trust and mutual benefit on issues that are of extreme strategic importance for our countries. These include cooperation in the energy industry, including nuclear energy, the oil and gas sector and military technology. Our two countries have signed specific agreements and documents in all three of these fields.
PetroVietnam has signed strategic agreements and contracts with Zarubezhneft and Gazprom for the exploration and development of oil and gas deposits on the Vietnamese continental shelf, in the Russian Federation and in third-party countries.
The Vietnam Coal and Mineral Resources Corporation has signed a contract and memorandum of cooperation with its Russian counterparts on coal extraction in Siberia and Russia's Far East in order to bring this commodity to the Vietnamese market.
Vietnam has also signed a contract to buy a submarine, military airplane and other military hardware, with appropriate assistance from Russia.
Vietnam has also officially invited Russia to assist Vietnam in the construction of the first Vietnamese nuclear power station, while observing the necessary standards. Prime Minister Putin has agreed to consider all of our proposals and has issued the necessary directives to Russian ministries and government agencies.
We both place a high value on direct contact between our two countries' government agencies and companies, as well as in the operations of the Intergovernmental Commission of Vietnam and Russia in the area of economics, trade, science and technology. In recent times, all the appropriate government agencies in Russia and Vietnam have prepared agreements and documents for signing, as you have just witnessed.
The mutual understanding and agreement that the leaders of Vietnam and Russia have reached will be implemented through specific measures. We hold that this is an important and objective aspect of improving relations and raising them to a new level of strategic partnership and customary friendship between Vietnam and Russia.
Mr Prime Minister, our Russian and Vietnamese friends, the Vietnamese people will always remember and be grateful for the enormous Russian assistance and support during our fierce struggle for independence, as well as during the years of peaceful construction.
I am firmly convinced that our friendly relations and multilateral cooperation between our countries, which are already very good and solid, will attain a new level of equanimity and mutual benefit. And that our relations and cooperation will continue to complement one another in order to develop together in the name of peace, stability, cooperation and development in Asia, Europe and the entire world.
Thank you very much.
