Filipino President Rodrigo Duterte will visit Vietnam on September 28-29 at the invitation of Vietnamese State President Tran Dai Quang.
This is the first visit by Duterte to Vietnam since he was elected as the Filipino president in June this year.
Filipino President Rodrigo Duterte (Photo by Reuters)
Filipino government representatives said that Duterte would also come to China and Brunei in October, and later Peru for the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation summit, before making a side trip to San Francisco to meet the Filipino community there.
Last year, the Philippines and Vietnam signed a strategic partnership agreement to boost co-operation in several areas, including defence and maritime security.
On the sidelines of the ASEAN summit in Laos recently, Prime Minister Nguyen Xuan Phuc had a meeting with Filipino President Rodrigo Duterte. During the talk, Prime Minister Phuc invited Duterte to Vietnam and the Filipino president agreed.
The two leaders stressed the importance of maintaining peace and security, stepping up co-operation, and handling disputes by peaceful measures in compliance with international law and the UN Convention on the Law of the Sea 1982, in the East Sea and consented to work together for those goals.
