DCM's visit to Missouri
On behalf of Ambassador Nguyen Quoc Cuong, between March 13 and 15, Deputy Chief of Mission Nguyen Vu Tung travelled to Columbia (Missouri) to attend, the launch of the Christopher “Kit” Bond Distinguished Lecture Series on Food Security at the Missouri University. Senator “Kit” Bond, Indonesian Ambassador to the US Dinno Djarlan and representatives from Indonesia, the Philippines and Vietnam Embassies and leading MU scholars were among participants in the first lecture where the central significance of food security to economic, socio-political, and geostrategic stability at both domestic and international levels was highlighted. DCM Nguyen Vu Tung noted that in this connection Vietnam, as a rice-exporting country, had become a more important actor in the joint efforts to ensure international food security, and therefore considered food security a field where it could present to the international community a foreign policy of responsiblity and proactiveness as adopted by the XI National Congress of the Communist Party of Vietnam. Climate change, negative impacts of dam construction on the upstreams of Mekong and Red Rivers as well as greater application of agroscientific advancements, he stressed, had been identified as major challenges to Vietnam’s agricultural production and also the fields in which Vietnam wished to build stronger cooperative relationships with the world community in general and scientists at MU in particular.
DCM Nguyen Vu Tung also talked with Vietnamese students at MU, whose level of academic and cultural presence was one of the best in campus, according to MU officials and professors.
