Belarus and Vietnam to produce weapons

Belarus proposes Vietnam to set up a joint venture to produce weapons and military equipment.

“The Belarusian side proposes Vietnamese partners to elaborate new forms of cooperation allowing to develop opportunities of both enterprises of the Belarusian military industrial complex and our Vietnamese partners in the military cooperation. In particular, we have approached the need to proceed from export-import operations to sharing technologies in producing military-oriented products, attracting new innovative technologies and setting up joint ventures to produce weapons and military equipment, also for third countries,” says a press release of the State Military Industrial Committee of Belarus following the 13th meeting of the Belarusian-Vietnamese commission on military industrial cooperation held on Thursday.      

Issues of educational programmes for Vietnamese specialists, also in the Belarusian Military Academy, were discussed during the meeting.

Aliaksandr Lukashenka met with Prime Minister of Vietnam Nguyen Tan Dung on May 17. The ruler said he saw opportunities to boost cooperation with Vietnam hoping to reach trade of $500 million in the two nearest years.

Speaking about the current trade level of $200m between the two countries, Lukashenka said: “It is not the trade with such a huge country as yours.” “Moreover, Vietnam is among the states we have no problems with, no close topics for cooperation,” he noted.

Lukashenka said Belarus was ready to develop cooperation with Vietnam “from supplies of common consumer goods to military cooperation”. “We are ready to as close ties with Vietnam as Vietnam is interested in,” the dictator noted.

Lukashenka stressed Vietnam was for several reasons a “key state” for Belarus in Southeast Asia. “But the main reason for our interest in Vietnam is that we are old friends. We have always been with you in difficult times for Vietnam,” the ruler said.