(VOVworld) – Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong has left Hanoi for an official visit to the US at the invitation of the US administration. Mr. Trong’s five-day visit will boost bilateral cooperation in politics, economics, and trade.

Party General Secretary Nguyen Phu Trong. (Photo: VOV)

Speaking to VOV reporters, US Ambassador to Vietnam Ted Osius said the visit shows that Vietnam-US relations are progressing. Mr. Osius said that over the past 20 years Vietnam and the US have passed some important milestones in their relationship. Mr. Osius said: “From 20 years ago when we had half billion USD in annual trade to 35 billion USD in trade this year. I think we can hit 40 billion in 2015. The increase in trade also means an increase in the number of people who are going back and forth between our two countries. Students have gone up from about 1,000 a year to almost 17,000 a year. We have been working together on environmental issues such as climate change and clean water and what can be done together to improve Vietnam’s environment and to prepare for the difficulties that will come as a result of climate change. We’re also working together on health and on epidemic diseases on HIV/AIDS and this area is very fruitful for further collaboration. We work together on issues left over from our difficult history. So we have done a lot. We gonna spend a hundreds million USD to clean up dioxin, particularly in Da Nang. We’ve spent about 80 million USD to clean up unexploded ordnance, especially in the central of the country. We’ve done a tremendous amount together to locate Americans missing from the war and to help the Vietnamese locate it’s missing from the war. I think it’s quite an astonishing amount of progress in only 20 years.”

The ambassador expressed his belief that the two countries will have a bright future together.