Hanoi, (VNA) – The UK’s newly-appointedAmbassador to Vietnam Gareth Ward has affirmed that defence relationship is avery important indicator to strengthen the Vietnam-UK relations.

In an exclusive interview with the Vietnam News Agencyon the occasion of the 45th anniversary of the Vietnam-UK diplomaticrelations, Ambassador Gareth Ward said: “Britain is a permanent member of theUN Security Council and active in peacekeeping. Vietnam is bidding to become amember of Security Council for the 2020-2021 and so we would like to cooperateon a lot of issues.”

Defence cooperation between Vietnam and the UKhas been developing, especially in terms of delegation exchange, training andparticipation in the United Nations peacekeeping force. The two countries’ militaries have cooperated in theareas of maritime law, training coast guards and peacekeepers along with developingunderstanding between the two navies.

Vietnamese peacekeepers will go to take over from amilitary hospital in South Sudan which is currently run by the British.

The first defence policy dialogue at the deputy ministerial levelbetween Vietnam and the UK is slated for later this year.

“The defence strategic talks will also focus ontraining, particularly training for UN peacekeeping,” the ambassador said,adding both sides will focus on issues like military engineering capacity inthe future.

The progress across the relationship between Vietnam andthe UK has been extremely rapid particularly in the last eight years since thetwo countries upgraded their relations to strategic partnership.

“The volume of trade has been growing at around about10 percent a year and the number of British companies interested in Vietnam hasalso been growing,” he said.


Statistics released by the Vietnam General Department ofCustoms showed that in the first half of 2018, Vietnam and the UK enjoyed 3.12billion USD in two-way trade, up 14.2 percent against the same period lastyear.

Last year, 285,000 British people visited Vietnam,including 116,000 arrivals to Ho Chi Minh City.

Gareth Ward revealed that his priority during hisfour-year tenure in Vietnam will focus on education and health.

“Britain is very good in innovation, good witheducation. There are five of the top 20 universities globally are British so Isee huge potential for us to cooperate in research and equally on health,” hesaid.

Currently, there are over 50 joint decrees and about30 research partnership taking place between Vietnamese and Britishuniversities.

More than 10,000 Vietnamese students are pursuingstudy in the European country.

According to the ambassador, Vietnam now has a goodlife expectancy but it is facing new health challenges such as diabetes, drugresistance diseases.

“We can do a lot of work together on developing betterpublic health and better medicine,” he said.

Regarding the upcoming events as part of activities tomark the 45th anniversary of the two countries’ diplomatic ties, ambassadorGareth Ward said the London symphony orchestra will be performing around HoanKiem Lake during the British festival in Hanoi on October 5-7. Similar eventwill be held in Ho Chi Minh City in November.

UK ambassador also expressed his impression onVietnam’s change since his first visit to the country as a tourist 20 years agowhich he said “is rapid and significant”.

“I think the single most important factor has been theopenness to trade which Vietnam demonstrated in joining the WTO and encouragingforeign investment and working to improve the business environment.”

The ambassador also said he is pleased to see thatVietnam has risen 14 places in the World Bank index of Ease of Doing BusinessRankings, adding this is a great signal relating to the improvement in businessenvironment.-VNA