This is the second time John Key has visited Vietnam as Prime Minister of New Zealand (the first visit took place in 2010).- Mr Prime Minister, during his visit to New Zealand, Vietnam's Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung in March, the two leaders agreed to strengthen the comprehensive partnership, aiming at upgrading the strategic partnership. Can you tell us more about how to realize this goal in the upcoming visit to Vietnam?
Prime Minister John Key: New Zealand and Vietnam have common interests and increasing the upcoming visit is a good opportunity for the two countries to consolidate and strengthen this relationship.
Vietnam's export market with the fastest growth rate of New Zealand in Southeast Asia, with bilateral trade volume currently exceeds 1 billion NZD/year.
Prime Minister John Key said in the interview
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During the visit of Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung to New Zealand in March, the two sides pledged to double this figure by 2020 and the efforts to accomplish the goal soon.
The two sides also agreed to work closely to further fields such as aviation and education and these are fields where the two countries are respected before this visit.
To demonstrate commitment and confidence in the opportunities for cooperation in this field, 13 leading representatives of the education sector and the aviation industry are also involved in the New Zealand delegation to Vietnam this time.
New Zealand has many possible areas of cooperation with Vietnam and this visit will be an opportunity to more effectively exploit the opportunities of investment and trade cooperation in the aviation sector and the education that both two countries have enormous potential.
- You had suggestions for new cooperation initiative "Intergovernmental trade partnership" to help Vietnam to access to sources of iworld-class ntellectual property of New Zealand. Can you tell about the roadmap to realize this initiative?
Prime Minister John Key: As a country with a small area but there are many innovative initiatives, New Zealand has a lot of experience in the key areas of public policy and has many world leading solutions. Of these, many initiatives can be applied successfully in other countries.
Through the program shared by the Intergovernmental, New Zealand shared intellectual property resources and special knowledge in areas such as agriculture, food security, health, education and commercial fishing platform tomorrow.
This initiative is being conducted in Vietnam through seminars lasted one day in Hanoi to build food chain sustainability. Besides, there took place the discussion of business which I considered practically.
- Vietnam and New Zealand conducted regular exchange of views, consultation and cooperation on policy and mutual assistance addressing regional issues and international mutual interest, promoting efficiency mechanisms for cooperation in international and regional fora. Then asking him to know his own perspective and the New Zealand government on how to resolve the sovereignty dispute in the East Sea?
Prime Minister John Key: New Zealand is not involved in the dispute over sovereignty in the East Sea, but we have a direct interest in the management of stress here. New Zealand opposed any act threatening peace and undermine confidence in the region.
As an island nation, New Zealand attaches great importance to international law and the principle of freedom of navigation. We call on the parties to claims in the East Sea dispute curb on the basis of respect for international law.
We expect the parties to fully implement the Declaration of Conduct in the East Sea (DOC) that ASEAN and China signed and soon adopted the Code of Conduct in the East Sea (COC) to curb stress. I'm sure this will be one of the issues to be discussed at the East Asia Summit (EAS) next week.
