The 2017 annual dialogue between the Diplomatic Academy of Vietnam and the Laos Institute of Foreign Affairs

On March 3rd 2017, approved by the Foreign Minister, the annual dialogue with the Institute of Foreign Affairs of Laos’s delegation (IFA - including 05 members led by Ambassador Thieng Boupha, the Academy’s President) was held by the Diplomatic Academy of Vietnam (DAV).

Since 1999, implementing the research and educational exchange collaboration agreement between the Academy of International Relations (now is the Diplomatic Academy of Vietnam) and the Institute of Foreign Affairs of Laos (IFA), the two countries’ Diplomatic Academy would annually take turns to organize the dialogue and invite the partner’s Diplomatic Academy to discuss on research exchange and cadres training to enhance the extensive conventional cooperative partnership between the two countries in general and between the two Academy in particular.

This year’s dialogue included 4 sessions, focusing on topics of: (i) security issues, international relations regionally and globally in the context of new geo-political changes; (ii) the evaluation of Laos on the U.S, China and regional security environment; (iii) the ASEAN community and the Vietnam-Laos bilateral relations; and (iv) discussion on the recruitment, educating and training cadres, experience to organize translating and interpretating training courses for diplomatic cadres. The Dialogue was organized with a friendly, trusting and outspoken manner. Both sides’ evaluations on global and regional situations share many similarities.

Ending the dialogue, at the witness of the leaders of relevant departments under the Ministry of Foreign Affairs’s representatives (the foreign policy department, the ASEAN department, the personnel and organization department) and the attended delegates, Associate Professor Ph.D Nguyen Vu Tung - President of the DAV, and Ambassador Thieng Boupha - President of the IFA, Laos signed the new Memorandum of Understanding (MOU) between the two Diplomatic Academy for the period of 2017 onwards. This year’s MOU inherited and updated the 2012 MOU signed in Ha Tinh Province, Vietnam, between the two Diplomatic Academy regarding continuing the annual exchange as well as enhancing collaboration between the DAV and the IFA, Laos within the next years.