Prime Minister to attend ASEAN-GCC Summit, visit Saudi Arabia this week

The trip will be made at the invitation of the King of Saudi Arabia, Salman bin Abdulaziz Al Saud.

In a recent article released by Channel NewsAsia, the GCC, which comprises Saudi Arabia, Kuwait, United Arab Emirates, Qatar, Bahrain and Oman, first established ties with ASEAN in 1990.

Relations between the two regions have gained pace, with all six members of the GCC signing ASEAN's peace pact, the Treaty of Amity and Cooperation, in recent years. Kuwait most recently entered the treaty in September this year.

The foreign ministers of both blocs already meet every year on the sidelines of the United Nations General Assembly in New York.

Viet Nam and Saudi Arabia established diplomatic ties in 1999. Over the past 24 years, bilateral relations between the two countries have achieved encouraging progress, making Viet Nam and Saudi Arabia became important partners of each other in two regions.

The two countries will celebrate the 25th anniversary of their diplomatic ties in 2024.

The two sides continue to maintain mutual support at multilateral forums and international organizations. Recently, Saudi Arabia has supported Viet Nam to stand for the non-permanent membership of the United Nations Security Council for the term 2020-2021.

Saudi Arabia is one of Viet Nam's leading economic partners in the Middle East, with bilateral trade surging 32.4 per cent year-on-year to US$2.7 billion in 2022./.