HANOI -- Lao Vice President Choumaly Sayasone, in Vietnam on a week long visit, has pledged with his Vietnamese counterpart Truong My Hoa to strengthen bilateral relations, state media said Tuesday.

Choumaly, who arrived in Hanoi on Monday, also agreed to "greater cooperation on regional and international issues of mutual concern," the ruling Communist Party's Nhan Dan newspaper said.

The senior Lao official met Monday with Vietnamese President Tran Duc Luong and Nguyen Van An, chairman of Vietnam's National Assembly.

Choumaly is scheduled to visit the central city of Danang and the southern business capital of Ho Chi Minh City before returning to Vientiane on July 28.

The two neighbors are among the last of the world's surviving communist regimes.

Vietnam maintained an official military presence in Laos until 1989 and continues to exert considerable political influence in the country.

Some 50,000 Vietnamese troops helped the Lao military savagely crush in 1978 a guerrilla army that had been mobilized by the US Central Intelligence Agency to fight its secret conflict in Laos during the Vietnam War.