HANOI, July 24 (Xinhua) -- French Senate President Christian Poncelet will pay an official visit to Vietnam from July 27 to Aug.1 at the invitation of Nguyen Phu Trong, Chairman of the National Assembly of Vietnam, the country's top legislature, according to local newspaper People on Thursday.

    Since the establishment of Vietnam-France diplomatic relations in 1973, the two countries have strengthened exchanges of high-ranking delegations, and boosted cooperative ties in such fields as trade, official development assistance (ODA), investment, culture, education and science, according to the Vietnamese Ministry of Foreign Affairs.

    France is a big investor, ODA donor and trading partner of Vietnam, with their two-way trade standing at over 1.3 billion euros (nearly 2.1 billion U.S. dollars) in 2007.