Chair of the Milli Majlis Sahiba Gafarova had a meeting with Chairman of the National Assembly of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam Vương Đình Huệ in the course of her current visit to Cambodia on 21 November.

Following an exchange of greetings, the Chair of the Milli Majlis mentioned the existing bonds of friendship between Azerbaijan and Vietnam, recalled the thirty years passed since the establishment of the bilateral diplomatic relations and said that the political ties had been evolving all those years. Reciprocal high-status visits factor tremendously into the strengthening of those relations, according to Mrs Gafarova.

She proceeded to mention various initiatives of Azerbaijan to broaden international co-operation and underlined the Non-Aligned Movement member-states’ backing for the foundation by Azerbaijan as a chairing state of the organisation’s Parliamentary Network. The Network’s constituent conference took place in Madrid in November 2021 and its second conference that was held in Baku went from 30 June to 1 July this year. Mrs Gafarova supplied Mr Huệ with ample information about both events before telling him that delegates of more than 40 countries and 8 international organisations had taken part in the Baku Conference and that a member of Vietnam’s National Assembly had attended the constituent conference in the capital of Spain.

Now, the next conference of the NAM PN is slated to take place on the margins of the 146^th Assembly of the Inter-Parliamentary Union in Manama in March 2023, Mrs Gafarova remarked before making Mr Huệ wholly aware of the details of the tasks ahead and the work planned for until then.

Sahiba Gafarova then talked about the role of inter-parliamentary connexions in strengthening inter-state relations, adding that such meetings as this one were very commendable for they made it possible to exchange experience and information in this field. It is important that both sides’ parliamentarians should promote their contacts through the inter-parliamentary friendship groups and, at the same time, it is as essential to keep up interaction in the international arena. There are, apart from the on-going co-operation with various state agencies, ties between our countries’ ruling parties, that is, the New Azerbaijan Party and the Communist Party of Vietnam, it was said.

The meeting went on to the speaker of the Azerbaijani legislature telling about our country’s victory in the 44-day Patriotic War, the liberation of our lands from Armenian occupation and the national territory of Azerbaijan having been whole again as well as about the current large-scale restoration and building work afoot in those provinces.

Chairman of the National Assembly of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam Vương Đình Huệ remarked that his country was interested in making its ties with Azerbaijan stronger yet. He referred to the historical roots of our relationship, the one that was founded by Ho Chi Minh and Heydar Aliyev. According to Mr Huệ, Azerbaijan is a state that’s friendly to Vietnam and one of Vietnam’s foreign political priorities is specifically to continue strengthening the existing friendly links with various states.

The head of the National Assembly, too, underlined the special role of the parliaments in broadening the relations, in which terms, he added, regular meetings of parliamentarians and exchanges of opinions about diverse topics between them were both to the point and useful. On the other hand, Vương Đình Huệ said, it is as important to interact in international parliamentary bodies.

Vietnam as a member of the Non-Aligned Movement considers the co-operation under its aegis to be of tremendous importance, and is contributing to the work of the entity’s Parliamentary Network as well, according to Vương Đình Huệ.

Other matters of shared interest were also talked over as the meeting progressed.

The Press and Public Relations Department

The Milli Majlis