Vietnam military doctors in Hanoi train for a U.N. peacekeeping mission
in South Sudan in June 2019. Photo by VnExpress/Gia Chinh. 

Vietnam has revealed plans to upgrade its U.N. peacekeeping training center into a regional facility for the Asia Pacific. 

During an online meeting on Friday with Atul Khare, U.N. Under-Secretary-General for Operational Support, Vietnam’s Deputy Defense Minister Senior Lieutenant-General Nguyen Chi Vinh said, "We would like to have the United Nations’ agreement and support to set up this center with a suitable model.

"Several countries have expressed excitement at this initiative by Vietnam, and they are waiting for the U.N. and Vietnam to come up with a suitable model for the center so that they could participate."

The country’s Department of Peacekeeping Operations has a center to train Vietnamese forces, and this will be expanded to provide training in all aspects of peacekeeping.

Khare said the U.N. supports Vietnam’s plan to set up the center and called on the country to work with U.N. agencies to define its functions, tasks and organizational structure.

Since 2014 Vietnam has deployed officers for U.N. peacekeeping missions in South Sudan and the Central African Republic on 29 occasions.

In 2018, for the first time ever, it sent a team of military doctors to work at the U.N. field hospital in South Sudan. A second team left for South Sudan last November.

In March a decision to set up a third team of medical doctors was made.