Only when such an environment is created, can we successfully carry out the Renewal process as well as national industrialisation and modernisation to firmly build and defend the Socialist Vietnamese State, said Mr Manh at a ceremony in Hanoi on November 1.

The ceremony was held to mark the 60^th anniversary of the Party Central Committee’s Commission for External Relations. 

Mr Manh noted that foreign affairs play a very important role in Party and State activities, meeting strategic tasks of the country’s revolutionary cause in different periods, from national liberation and unification in the past to national construction and defence at the present.

He analysed major challenges to the world, including sectarian, religious and territorial conflicts and terrorism, and said that in the face of these challenges Vietnam must persistently continue its foreign policy of independence, self-reliance, peace, cooperation and development.

He asked the Commission to work closely with relevant agencies to keep a close watch on any global developments, analyse and provide accurate forecasts and make timely recommendations to the Party Central Committee, its Political Bureau and its Secretariat.

He urged the commission to actively oversee the implementation of high-level agreements signed between Vietnam and other countries and strive to promote people-to-people diplomacy.

The Party leader reminded the Commission to work closely with the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, the National Assembly Committee for External Affairs and other ministries and agencies, and improve its staff’s qualifications to meet the requirements of the new era.

In his speech, Hoang Binh Quan, a Party Central Committee member and head of the Commission, reviewed its 60-year history and said many generations of the Commission have worked tirelessly to make a significant contribution to the revolutionary cause of the Party and the nation.

Recognising its outstanding contributions to the nation, the Party and State have awarded many high distinctions to the Commission and its officials, including the Gold Star Order (in 2003), the Ho Chi Minh, the Independence Order and the Labour Order. The Lao People’s Revolutionary Party and State have also conferred the Issala Order, first class, on the commission.