According to VNA, on September 23, at the United Nations Headquarters, New York City, USA, within the framework of the High-Level Week of the 81st United Nations General Assembly (UNGA), General Secretary and President To Lam had a meeting with UN Secretary-General António Guterres.
At the meeting, the UN Secretary-General shared his youthful memories of participating in the Vietnam War and expressed deep admiration for Vietnam's outstanding development achievements after 40 years of Doi Moi, and affirmed that Vietnam has become an important pillar of multilateralism with a special and distinctive cooperative relationship.
Appreciating Vietnam's active and pioneering participation in the fields of security, politics, sustainable development and equitable energy transition, Secretary-General António Guterres expressed his desire for Vietnam to continue to strongly participate in the world's transition process, contributing to efforts to respond to climate change and promote emerging technologies such as artificial intelligence (AI).
Highlighting Vietnam's achievements and development directions, General Secretary and President To Lam emphasized Vietnam's orientation in the new stage is sustainable development, taking the quality of life, safety and happiness of the people as the core measure.
Affirming the foreign policy of independence, self-reliance, multilateralization, and diversification, the General Secretary and President clearly stated that Vietnam has strongly shifted from a recipient of aid to a proactive and active member contributing responsibly to consolidating the central role of the UN; affirming support for the UN80 reform initiative to optimize the operational efficiency of the organization.
As evidence of this commitment, the General Secretary and President emphasized that Vietnam will continue to participate more deeply in peacekeeping operations, sponsoring free workplaces for UN agencies in Hanoi in the next 10 years with an estimated value of 3 million USD, contributing nearly 1.3 million USD to the international peacekeeping budget and ready to host major conferences. Vietnam will strive to actively contribute to UN initiatives promoting global governance on science and technology, artificial intelligence, green transformation, and digital transformation.
At the same time, the General Secretary and President requested the UN to continue to accompany Vietnam in digital transformation, capacity building, experience sharing, connecting with international expert, technology and financial networks, responding to climate change, promoting green transformation, especially mobilizing resources and strengthening the implementation of the Fair Energy Transition Partnership (JETP) framework.
Towards the future, the two sides agreed to effectively implement the Strategic Cooperation Framework for the period 2027-2031 and national program documents with specialized organizations such as the UNDP, UNICEF, UNFPA, in order to reform the global governance and international finance systems towards fairness and transparency.
Exchanging views on international and regional issues, the two leaders agreed to further tighten ASEAN-UN cooperation, affirmed their support for ASEAN's central role and consistent stance to ensure security, safety, and freedom of navigation in the region on the basis of the supremacy of international law, especially the 1982 UN Convention on the Law of the Sea (UNCLOS).
