Iranian speaker starts Southeast Asian tour
Iran’s Parliament Speaker Ali Larijani left Tehran for Hanoi on Sunday at the start of a tour of Vietnam and Sri Lanka in a bid to boost relations with the Southeast Asian countries.
Before leaving Tehran, Larijani told reporters that the trip aims at developing bilateral cooperation in various fields including parliamentary exchanges, IRNA reported.
“We have good economic commonalities with Vietnam and grounds have been prepared for establishing cooperation between the two sides,” he said.
“Iran and Vietnam have good parliamentary cooperation and political consultations in international bodies,” he added.
Larijani said that the important issues on the global scene are among topics which will to be discussed with Vietnamese officials.
The issue of Syria is one of the important topics which will be reviewed with Sri Lankan and Vietnamese officials, Larijani noted.
In a meeting in Russia back in October 2017, the parliament speakers of Iran and Vietnam called for closer economic and industrial cooperation between the two countries, with the Vietnamese side urging efforts to raise the annual bilateral trade to $2 billion.
In March 2016, the then Vietnamese president, Truong Tan Sang, paid an official visit to Iran. Following comprehensive talks with Iranian President Hassan Rouhani, it was decided that the value of bilateral trade be increased to $2 billion in a five-year period.