Chairman Wu's visit to Cambodia is of great significance: National Assembly President

02 Nov, 2010
Source:Xinhua

"On behalf of the National Assembly, I would like to highly value the progress of relations between Cambodia and China," Cambodian National Assembly President Heng Samrin told Xinhua in an interview on Tuesday.

"From Nov. 3 through 6, 2010, Wu Bangguo, chairman of the Standing Committee of the National People's Congress of China, will make an official visit to Cambodia at the invitation of me. Cambodia is looking forward to this all important visit, which will be sure to achieve complete success and to further deepen Cambodia and China's comprehensive friendly cooperative partnership," he said.

He highly valued the friendship relations between Cambodia and China."Our friendly relations have sustained the fierce test of international drastic change, and keep consolidated and developed."

"The present Cambodian leaders as well as the leaders in old generations have attached great importance to strengthening friendly relations with China which have so long left by our ancestors, because it is coincide with the fundamental interests of the peoples of our two countries and which is also contributing to the regional and global peace and development," Heng Samrin said.

He said that the two countries always kept high level contact in recent years, citing such as the visit by Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao in 2006; Jia Qinglin, chairman of the National Committee of the Chinese People's Political Consultative Conference, in 2008; and Chinese Vice President Xi Jinping's visit in 2009 as well as other senior officials' visits.

"It is obvious that our King Norodom Sihamoni, President of the Senate Chea Sim and Prime Minister Hun Sen have all visited many times to China. For the legislative bodies, the relations have been promoted since my visit to China in 2007 during which an agreement of cooperation between the two parliaments was signed," he added.

"I highly value the progress of our friendship, solidarity and cooperation in various fields. To date, many agreements and MOUs have been signed by the two countries. From 2004 to 2010, 158 scholarships have been provided by Chinese government for Cambodia 's human resource development, and an additional of 666 scholarships for short term training."

On the issue of economic and trade cooperation, Heng said that "it is worth to note that the bilateral trades of our two nations have also been quickly increased. Now, we are in the process of promoting more trades and on this particular field, we also would like to express our thanks to the People's Republic of China for tax exemptions of 418 types exported from Cambodia. In the mean time, it is an encouraging trend of Chinese investments in Cambodia, especially, the power supply sector. I would like to take this opportunity to appeal to the PRC to expand more investments and pay more focus on tourism, economics, culture, education, health so as to benefit the mutual governments and our two peoples.

At the same time, Heng said he would like to express his sincere gratitude to the people and the government of China who have supported and assisted Cambodia.

Heng reiterated that Cambodia, as always, adheres to one China policy and to implement all agreements signed "by myself and H.E. Wu Bangguo during my visit to China in 2007". He said these agreements, the two sides have approved and arranged, will strengthen the cooperation for the levels including senior leaders of the parliament; specialized committee of the parliament; friendship group of the parliament; and the General Secretariat of the parliament.

When talking about the future of the relations of the two countries, Heng said that "as for the future, our two nations will and must continue to strengthen friendship, solidarity and cooperation in the bilateral framework at both national and international fora in order to serve the interests of our two peoples and of our two nations."