Ulaanbaatar /MONTSAME/ Speaker of parliament Z.Enkhbold Thursday received a delegation led by Ms Zhao Shaohua, a Deputy Chairwoman of the Foreign Affairs Committee of China’s National People's Congress.

The Speaker expressed a gratitude to Ms Zhao for participating in the 9th Asia-Europe Parliamentary Partnership (ASEP9). He said Mongolia and China have a tradition to collaborate in international and regional actions, and thanked China for rendering support to Mongolia in hosting the 11th ASEM Summit.

Ahead of the 11th ASEM Summit to be held this July here, Mongolia will organize several meetings connecting Asia and Europe, "these events are important for determining further Mongolian foreign policy," Enkhbold said.

Developing sustainable good neighborhood friendly relations and mutually beneficial cooperation with China is of the priorities of the Mongolian foreign policy. A regularization of high level meetings and visits contributes to strengthening of the bilateral relations. "Moreover, 100 Mongolian youths have visited Ningbo city, one of the centers of Chinese ancient culture and of present development, I am happy with it," Mr Enkhbold said.

Thanking the Speaker for the audience, Ms Zhao underlined that the Mongolian parliament has significantly contributed to the bilateral cooperation. She is satisfied that our ties reached a comprehensive strategic partnership volume after the state visit of China’s President Xi Jinping paid to Mongolia in 2015. She supported the Speaker's idea of boosting the bilateral cooperation and asked Mr Enkhbold to focus on intensifying works to be done in accordance with a document adopted during the 1st meeting of the Permanent mechanism of the Mongolia-China inter-parliamentary cooperation.

She also added that the 2nd meeting of this mechanism has been scheduled in Beijing, and invited the Speaker and MPs to participate in it.

The Speaker confirmed that new members of parliament to be selected from the 2016 election will take part in the 2nd meeting of the permanent mechanism. Noting that the foreign policy of Mongolia never changes when the country gets a new composition of parliament, the Speaker said Mongolia attaches a special attention to the trilateral cooperation Mongolia-China-Russia.

Mr Enkhbold pointed out that a mechanism of the Strategic consultative meeting of the three countries’ FMs has bee created after a trilateral meeting of the three State Heads. A working group of the three countries intend to approve the “Economic corridor” joint programme, connecting it with the “Steppe road”, “Economic region of Silk Road” and the Eurasian Economic Union (EEU), he said. 

The Speaker asked the high guest to convey his greetings to Zhang Dejiang, the Chairman of the Standing Committee of the China National People's Congress.

Present at the meeting were M.Enkhbold, a Vice Speaker and head of the Mongolia-China inter-parliamentary group; D.Terbishdagva MP; and others.