Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung held a cordial reception of UNESCO Director General Irina Bokova in Hanoi on October 1, thanking her agency for recognising Thang Long Royal Citadel as a World Cultural Heritage site.

 

Dung emphasised that the recognition is of great significance as the capital city is celebrating the Thang Long-Hanoi millennium anniversary from October 1.

 

He also expressed thanks for Bokova for her speech at the event’s inauguration and reiterated Vietnam’s policy to look for further cooperation with the United Nations Educational, Scientific and Cultural Cooperation (UNESCO).

 

“During the national construction, Vietnam considers economic development as a central task, culture as the social foundation and education as the nation’s top policy,” said the Government leader.

 

He continued by saying that Vietnam always cares for tangible and intangible cultural assets.

 

The Vietnamese Government has, therefore, looked for strong cooperation in this field with foreign countries and international organisations, especially the UNESCO.

 

“Vietnam supports the formation of an ASEAN-UNESCO cooperation framework”, Dung emphasised.

 

For her part, Bokova, who is on a working visit to Vietnam , congratulated Vietnam for winning the World Cultural Heritage title for the Thang Long Royal Citadel.

 

She sounded satisfied at the recent fine development of bilateral relations between the UNESCO and Vietnam .

 

UNESCO has always stood by and supported Vietnam in its development cause, pledged the UN development agency’s chief.

 

Bokova also expressed her impression upon Vietnam’s allocation of over 20 percent of the annual State budget to education.

 

She pledged to work with local ministries and agencies to provide assistance in general and tertiary education as well as advanced technology application in teaching, thus bringing Vietnam to a certain place in the international educational map.

 

During her stay, Bokova signed a memorandum of understanding (MOU) on cooperation with the Vietnam National UNESCO Committee, focusing on education, social and natural sciences, heritage culture and human resource development.

 

In a press briefing on October 1, the UNESCO chief pledged to continue with cooperation and assistance with Vietnam in conserving and promoting the value of cultural heritages as well maintaining and upholding traditional cultural identity.

 

All this is expected to contribute to economic development and building an equal and comprehensive society, Bokova said.

 

In the recent past, the UNESCO has provided strong assistance to Vietnam in illiteracy elimination, universalisation of primary and junior secondary education and improving higher education quality./.

 

(VNA)