The fruitful official visit to Japan by Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong, along with his successful tours to China and the US earlier this year, has contributed to improving the stature of Vietnam and its Party in the world, a senior official has said. Giving further details on the Japan visit, Chairman of the Party Central Committee’s Commission for External Relations Hoang Binh Quan told the press that it was the first official visit to the Northeast Asian country by Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong, and it was longed for by both sides. The tour was made at a time when bilateral ties were developing fruitfully with a myriad of cooperation opportunities and opened up a new vision for the growth of the two countries’ extensive strategic partnership for peace and prosperity in Asia. The Vietnamese leader and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe issued a joint vision statement on the countries’ relations, which illustrated a new, positive and solid stride in their connections, Quan said. He spotlighted significant outcomes of the visit, elaborating that the tour helped deepen the nations’ political trust. Japan affirmed the importance it attaches to the relationship with Vietnam – its important partner in the region – while Vietnam reiterated that Japan is its leading and long-term partner. During the visit, the two sides agreed to bolster economic connectivity which is critical to their relations with focuses on development strategy connectivity, production capacity connectivity, and human resources connectivity. Japan vowed 100 billion JPY (836.28 million USD) of official development assistance (ODA) to three major projects in Vietnam and promised to actively consider the provision of 300 billion JPY (2.5 billion USD) of ODA in 2015, the official noted, adding that the two sides inked a mid- and long-term vision on agricultural cooperation. Japan also declared the opening of its market for Vietnamese mangoes. Vietnam and Japan were unanimous in expanding collaboration in other realms, including culture, people-to-people exchange, education-training, science-technology, and defence exchange. Japan will support Vietnam in joining the United Nations peace-keeping activities and improving the law enforcement capacity at sea. Both sides underscored the continued close coordination at regional and international forums on issues of shared concern. Vietnam highly valued Japan ’s commitment to follow the path of peaceful development and endorsed the Northeast Asian nation’s active contributions to regional and global peace, cooperation and development. According to Quan, the Vietnamese Party and State’s consistent foreign policy during the Doi moi (Renewal) period is independence, self-reliance, peace, cooperation and development, and diversification and multilateralisation of relations. It was demonstrated through General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong’s visits to China, the US and Japan this year. Those tours helped solidify Vietnam’s relations with the three world powers, the Party commission chairman said, adding that his country fully recovered cooperation and oriented its links with China towards the healthy and positive development. The historic visit to the US was a milestone opening up a new chapter and form a political foundation for bilateral relations to reach a new height. Meanwhile, the Japan visit created a new vision to comprehensively foster and deepen the two countries’ extensive strategic partnership, he stressed. He concluded that the successful tours by Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong intensified Vietnam’s important external relations and considerably elevated the global standing of the country and the Party, ultimately helping create a favourable international environment for the national development and protection.-VNA