Ambassador's visit to Louisiana

From 3-5. January, Ambassador Nguyen Quoc Cuong paid a working visit to Louisiana, a state is well known for its oil industries, agriculture, fishery and tourism.
During his visit, the Ambassador discussed with Senator David Vitter, Congressmen Bill Cassidy and Charles Boustany on the issues of common interests of the two countries. The US lawmakers expressed their interests and appraisals  on Vietnam's social-economic development, regional and international roles, appreciated US-Vietnam relations and hope that the relations will be further strengthened. Ambassador Cuong expressed his thanks to the hosts for their interests and support for better bilateral relations of the two countries. He also exchanged the views with the lawmakers on some issues of their concerns such as South China Sea dispute, Vietnam's policy on religion, overseas Vietnamese...
Ambassador Cuong also met with President Lafayette-Parish City Mr. Joey Durel and Mayor of New Orleans Mr. Mitchell Landrieu.  The Mayors welcomed the Ambassador and expressed their desire to promote cooperation  between Vietnam and their cities on tourism, oil industry services. On this occasion, the  Lafayette-Parish City President Mr. Joey Durel presented the Ambassador the certificate of the Lafayette-Parish City honorable citizenship.  Ambassador Cuong thanked their supports to the Vietnamese community in doing business, social activities and recovery after Katrina in 2005 and 2010 oil spill, and hoped that Vietnamese community in these cities would contribute more to the local development as well as to promote the Vietnam-US relations.
In Lafayette, Ambassador Cuong had a roundtable with more 40 representatives of local enterprises on Vietnam's investment policy. The oil industry and oil services companies expressed their interest in doing business in Vietnam.
Before his visit to Louisiana, Ambassador Nguyen Quoc Cuong addressed at the opening section of the 9th Annual Vietnam Education Foundation (VEF) Conference held in Shreveport (Louisiana) on Jan 3rd. The Ambassador highly valued the development of relations between Vietnam and USA in the all areas, especially in the educational cooperation, after 16 years of the normalization of the diplomatic relations between the two countries. He stressed that the educational cooperation remain a pillar of the future bilateral relations of the two countries and highlighted the active and effective contribution of the VEF to Vietnam and hoped that the Program will be continued for the further development of the relations between the two countries.