The eighth round of Egyptian-Vietnamese political consultations began here on Monday.

Assistant Foreign Minister for Asian Affairs Yasser Mourad and Vietnamese Deputy Foreign Minister Hong Nam Vu are heading the meetings.

The Egyptian side expressed desire to strengthen relations with ASEAN through joining cooperation and friendship treaty as a step on the road of obtaining a dialogue partner status.

Talks tackled beefing up cooperation between the two sides in the communications, information technology, petroleum, electricity, energy and fish wealth.

The two sides called for forming an Egyptian-Vietnamese business council, expressing their interest in a tripartite cooperation with the Egyptian Agency for Technical Cooperation.