Secretary Blinken And Vietnamese Foreign Minister Bui Thanh Son Before Their Meeting

Department of State

SECRETARY BLINKEN: Good afternoon, everyone. It is a pleasure to be with my friend and colleague, the foreign minister of Vietnam. The United States deeply values the comprehensive partnership that we have with Vietnam. We very much support a strong, prosperous, independent Vietnam. We are doing a lot of work together both on issues of bilateral importance, but also regional and even global importance, and I just appreciate the opportunity to continue our conversation and all the good work. Plus we're sitting next to each other in the APEC sessions. (Laughter.) It's the foreign minister saying we're neighbors.

FOREIGN MINISTER SON: Thank you again.

SECRETARY BLINKEN: Thank you so much.

FOREIGN MINISTER SON: Thank you very much for the opportunity for me to meet the Secretary and with the delegation. The Vietnam-U.S. relations have been - continue to expand, deepen, and we work not only for our mutual benefit for each of our people, but also cooperation to cope with the challenges for our both countries and the whole world - not only the economic situation, but nontraditional (inaudible). So I think large areas of cooperation that we can expand, and I'm very happy to have opportunity to meet with you and discuss our cooperation.

SECRETARY BLINKEN: Thank you.

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