(VOVworld) - President Tran Dai Quang and Italian President Sergio Mattarella have affirmed their determination to deepen the Vietnam-Italy strategic partnership in an effective manner. On Tuesday, President Tran Dai Quang, who is on a four-day state visit to Italy, and his Italian counterpart Sergio Mattarella agreed to step up the exchange of delegations and meetings, carry out the action plan for implementing the bilateral strategic partnership for 2017-2018, and continue exchanges between the two countries’ Parties and citizens. The two leaders agreed to outline orientations for development cooperation in line with the bilateral strategic partnership, focusing on vocational training, environmental protection, water resource management, and flood forecasting.

President Tran Dai Quang met Italian President Sergio Mattarella (Photo: VNA)

They vowed to increase the sharing of information and experience in fighting crime, and beef up cooperation in training, relief operations, bomb and mine clearance, defense manufacturing, and UN peace-keeping missions. They highlighted the importance of peace, stability, and navigation and aviation safety and freedom, and agreed that disputes in the East Sea should be addressed by peaceful measures based on respecting international law, particularly the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea, the Declaration on the Conduct of Parties in the East Sea (DOC), and the soon-to-be-finalized Code of Conduct in the East Sea (COC).

After their talks, the two leaders spoke to the media about orientations to boost future cooperation. President Mattarella called President Quang’s visit a landmark in the bilateral strategic partnership set up in 2013. President Quang said the two sides have agreed to make their strategic partnership more comprehensive and effective in the future: “Vietnam always attaches importance to deepening the Vietnam-Italy strategic partnership. We hope that Vietnam and Italy will continue implementing cooperative mechanisms such as the deputy foreign minister level strategic dialogue, the deputy minister level defense policy dialogue, the inter-government committee on economic cooperation, and the cooperative action programs on culture, education and training, and science and technology signed during this visit”.  

President Quang said the two sides agreed to raise two-way turnover to 6 billion USD in the period of 2017 – 2018 and create the best possible conditions for businesses in the two countries.

President Quang had separate meetings in Rome on Tuesday with leaders of the Italian Parliament - President of the Senate Pietro Grasso and Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies Laura Bonldrini.

President Tran Dai Quang and Speaker of the Chamber of Deputies Laura Bonldrini (Photo: VNA)

The two sides agreed that Vietnam and Italy need better cooperation in politics, economics, culture, education-training, science-technology, and defense-security and that there is a huge potential for such cooperation. They discussed issues in each region, affirming the necessity to increase cooperation at multilateral forums like the United Nations, the Asia-Europe Meeting (ASEM), Inter-Parliamentary Union forums, and the Asia-Europe Parliamentary Partnership (ASEP) conference.