Vienna (VNA) - National Assembly (NA) ChairmanVuong Dinh Hue met with President of the Inter-Parliamentary Union (IPU) Duarte Pacheco in Vienna on September 6 (local time) as part of his trip to Austria toattend the fifth World Conference of Speakers of Parliament (WCSP5).

At themeeting, the IPU President expressed his impression on the organisation of the 132nd IPU General Assembly in Hanoi, saying this was a great success of the IPU. Hehighly valued the contributions of the National Assembly of Vietnam whenchairing and coordinating with the IPU in the adoption of the 2015 HanoiDeclaration “The Sustainable Development Goals: Turning Words into Actions”.

NA Chairman Hue affirmed that attending IPU activities is an important task inVietnam's multilateral parliamentary diplomacy in order to promote and protectits interests as well as express the country's views on global concerns,contributing to raising the position of the Vietnamese legislature inparticular and Vietnam in general in the international arena.

It offers opportunities for the Vietnamese NA to access operationalexperiences and good practices of parliaments around the world in order to improvethe quality and efficiency of its activities, he noted.

Hue informed that the National Assembly of Vietnam has actively participated inpromoting the implementation of the Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), passinglaws, verifying and ratifying relevant international conventions and treaties,and approving national strategies and budgets for target programmes related tosustainable development.

In particular, it has promptly adopted a resolution to create a legal frameworkfor the Government to proactively implement COVID-19 prevention and controlmeasures, he added.

The top Vietnamese legislator made three proposals for the IPU to become aneven more effective organisation. They are actively promoting initiatives toinnovate operations, enhance the role of the IPU in current internationalaffairs, and further develop the partnership between the IPU and the UnitedNations (UN), thus ensuring the common interests of member parliaments;contributing to developing world parliamentary diplomacy and strengtheningmultilateral cooperation; and hastening the implementation of a tripartitecooperation project between member parliaments, the IPU and the UN to supportand create conditions for the National Assembly of Vietnam to integrate moredeeply into the activities of international organisations, especially in suchmatters as sustainable development, poverty reduction, post-pandemic economic recoveryand development.
           
The NA Chairman said that Vietnam is willing tohost symposiums at the request of the IPU, considering this an opportunity toboth support the IPU and improve its international cooperation capacity.

Expressing his consent with the proposals, IPU President Duarte Pachecoaffirmed his willingness to come to Hanoi to discuss in detail theimplementation of Vietnam's initiatives, including the organisation of regionalsymposiums and conferences on SDGs and economic recovery, and a globalconference of young parliamentarians between IPU general assemblies.

The two sides agreed that the IPU has been operating actively andeffectively as well as made many contributions to inter-parliamentarycooperation and multilateral diplomacy over the past 130 years. In the comingtime, member parliaments should actively propose and promote initiatives toinnovate the IPU's activities, especially further developing the IPU-UN partnership.

The COVID-19 pandemic has showed the fact that no single country, developed ordeveloping, can solve global problems by its own and multilateral cooperationremains the best way, including through parliamentary channels, they said, affirmingthat all parliaments need to work together and put their trust in the IPU tobuild a better world./.