HCM City (VNA) – Secretary of the HoChi Minh City Party Committee Nguyen Thien Nhan received a delegation from SaintPetersburg city of Russia on June 29, describing their working visit as anillustration of the cities’ respect for the traditional friendship betweenVietnam and Russia.

He thanked Saint Petersburg’s administration forcreating favourable conditions for HCM City officials’ working trip last May,which opened opportunities for bilateral cooperation in many potential areas.

He said HCM City and Saint Petersburg shouldstep up implementing the cooperation roadmap for 2018-2020, including prioritisingthe establishment of a cultural-economic centre of HCM City in Saint Petersburgand a similar centre of the Russian city in the southern hub of Vietnam.

Nhan also called on Saint Petersburg to bolsterties in health care, grant scholarships for ballet and symphony music studentsof Vietnam, and organise a week of HCM City goods in the city.

Regarding educational cooperation, the HCM Cityleader asked for more attention to teaching Vietnamese in Saint Petersburg andRussian in HCM City. He also suggested Russian be taught at high schools anduniversities toward adding Russian studies to the curricula of localuniversities.

He welcomed the initiative to connect the twocities’ youths, noting that youth exchanges are necessary as they will boostmutual understanding, solidarity and friendship between future generations ofVietnam and Russia, helping strengthen the time-tested amity between the twocountries and between HCM City and Saint Petersburg in particular.

For his part, Katanandov Sergey Leonidovich,special envoy of the governor of Saint Petersburg on issues regarding nationalbuilding and development and cooperation with Russian agencies, said theirworking visit from June 27 to 30 aims to realise the roadmap for bilateralcooperation for 2018-2020, which was signed last May.

Their working sessions with local departments,sectors and agencies obtained positive outcomes, especially in cooperation incyber security, youth-related work, people-to-people diplomacy,education-training, and health care.

He added that he is proud to represent SaintPetersburg leaders to attend the programme marking 95 years since President HoChi Minh, known as Nguyen Ai Quoc then, set foot in Russia for the first time.The late leader’s arrival in Petrograd, now Saint Petersburg, was an importantmilestone laying a foundation for the cooperation and friendship between Russiaand Vietnam, including between the two cities.

Earlier, the Saint Petersburg delegation visitedsome relic sites in HCM City and laid a wreath at the Ho Chi Minh statue infront of the municipal People’s Committee headquarters.-VNA