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President Vladimir Putin: Mr President, I am very glad to see you. Relations between our countries are not only formally, but actually strategic. Not to mention the level and character of our political joint actions, but trade and economic ties are also developing very successfully, as we planned them to. Compared with last year, trade rose by 24 per cent.

Our Vietnamese opposite numbers have asked us to prepare a selection of copies of documents on the development of diplomatic relations between the Soviet Union, Russia and Vietnam. And I am pleased to inform you that we have done this job. The Archive Service of the Russian President has carried out the required work, and I am ready to hand you today the copies of these documents. There are almost 500 pages altogether, beginning with a letter from Brezhnev and Kosygin to the leaders of Vietnam of 1965 and ending with a transcript of negotiations with a party and state delegation of Vietnam in 1982.

Trang Duc Luong: Mr President, I thank you very much for finding time to receive me within the framework of the APEC forum. I want to say that we all remember the warmth with which I was welcomed in Moscow during my May visit. I also wish to add that we always remember the warmth with which you and the Russian leadership treat the development of Vietnam and development of relations with Vietnam. I also like to point out that we see and experience satisfaction over the rapid implementation of accords reached in the course of the May visit. This is especially important in view of the fact that next year we will be celebrating the 50th anniversary of the establishing of diplomatic relations between our countries. We will exert every effort to worthily mark that memorable date in the history of our relations. I hope that our relations will continue to progress in the same spirit. And that the accords reached between us will be successfully realised.

Today we are having yet another memorable event in the history of our relations — our bilateral meeting takes place as part of an APEC forum, which is meeting under the slogan of struggle against terrorism, among others.

We likewise want to express our sympathy with the fact that your country is waging a struggle against manifestations of terrorism. We empathise and sympathise with you in every way. We give every approval to the determined actions which you, Mr President, take in your country to stop the proliferation of terrorism across your land. And we understand that sources of financing are located abroad.

We hope that under your leadership Russia will revive as a great power, and achieve new and big successes in its development. We hope that the role of Russia in the world will strengthen with every day. I have told you more than once that Russia is for all Vietnamese a great power, a country near to us, with which we are bound by special links. And we regard the successes scored by Russia as our own. A powerful and great Russia is a necessary element in the system of international relations. We have enthusiastically received the fact that Russia has tested a new kind of nuclear weapon.

Allow me to wish you the best of health and fresh successes in the leadership of Russia. Allow me once again to express not only my personal wish, but also that of the entire Vietnamese people, to see you again in Vietnam on a visit.

Vladimir Putin: Thank you very much, Mr President, for your kind words.