Vietnamese PM to attend funeral of late Cambodian Kin
English.news.cn 2013-02-03 10:54:33
Crowds of tearful mourners have gathered at the royal palace to welcome the ex-king’s final homecoming and get a glimpse of his coffin.
HANOI, Feb. 3 (Xinhua) --
Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung is going to attend the royal cremation ceremony of the late Cambodian King Father Norodom Sihanouk scheduled on February 4 in Phnom Penh , Vietnamese Government Office online reported.
Together with Nguyen Tan Dung, prime ministers and high-ranking officials from 12 countries are expected to attend the ceremony, including
China, Brunei, France, Indonesia, Japan, Laos, Malaysia, Myanmar, the Philippines, Singapore and Thailand.
Sihanouk died of illness at the age of 89 in Beijing on October 15, last year. Over 1 million people are estimated to attend the funeral.
Vietnamese media recently reported in an article about the life of the late Cambodian King that "Norodom Sihanouk is a man of talents, having a life to experience many ups and downs. When alive, Sihanouk was so ebullient, active and amorous,"
Norodom Sihanouk had been trained at French schools in Vietnam' s southern Saigon, or now known as Ho Chi Minh city, and France's Paris.
For ten years, Sihanouk was successful in making Cambodia into a neutral country. However, he began to criticize the United States when the war in Vietnam had been escalated, said the Lao Dong (Labor) newspaper.
Vietnam and Cambodia established
diplomatic ties in 1967. Over the years, the Vietnam-Cambodia relations have finely developed in all fields. Vietnam-Cambodia have a border line of 1,137 km with 10 international border gates and 12 national border gates along with favorable river traffic which created favorable conditions for trade between the two countries.
In the period 2001-2011, the
Vietnam-Cambodia two-way trade has increased nearly 17 times, from 169 million U.S. dollars to 2.83 billion dollars, with the average growth rate of 23 percent per year. The figure increased to 3.1 billion dollars in 2012, exceed the target of 2.8 billion dollars set by the two governments.
Currently, Cambodia is one of the key markets of Vietnamese exports.