A delegation from VAST (Vietnamese Academy of Science and Technology) visited JSPS on 11 March 2004 for a half-day meeting. The delegation was headed by Prof. Dr. Nguyen Khoa Son, Vice President, and attended by two other VAST officials: Mr. Bui Cong Que, Director of Department of Planning and Finance, and Mr. Chu Tri Thang, Director of International Cooperation Department.

Prof. Motoyuki Ono, President of JSPS, welcomed the VAST delegation with the following words:

"Cooperation between Japan and Vietnam is expanding. As well as visits under our bilateral cooperation, JSPS invites many postdocs from Vietnam to Japan every year.

"JSPS became an "independent administrative institution" in October 2003, much the same way as NCST became VAST in January 2004. In this new environment, we will need to make our cooperative programmes more effective and efficient. JSPS is thinking to start another project-based programme like the ongoing Core University Programme with Vietnam, so that more universities in Japan and Vietnam can work together.

Through intensive discussions held at the meeting, VAST and JSPS decided to start a new programme called the "Inter-University Exchange Programme" (provisional). The programme will support joint projects organized by universities in the two countries. JSPS and VAST also decided to end, roughly by FY 2004, the individual scientist exchange programme, which has been the traditional means of bilateral collaboration. This will allow the two agencies to better concentrate their resources on the Core University Programme and the new "Inter-University Exchange Programme."

VAST had been named NCST (Vietnam National Centre for Natural Science and Technology) until January 2004.