Vietnam rejects rumor of deploying weapons to border with Cambodia Vietnam's Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Le Hai Binh is seen in this file photo. Tuoi Tre Vietnam’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs has denied the rumor spreading online that the country has deployed weapons and equipment to its southwestern border with Cambodia due to border tension.    The ministry’s spokesman, Le Hai Binh, made the denial at a press briefing in Hanoi on Thursday when replying to reporters’ questions on the rumor.  “The information [which is the rumor] mentioned by the reporters here is not true,” Binh stressed. Earlier, at a meeting of the Vietnam-Cambodia Joint Committee on Border Demarcation and Marker Planting, held from July 7 to 9 in Phnom Penh, the two co-chairmen of the committee agreed on a series of issues, the Vietnamese foreign ministry said. The Vietnamese delegation to the meeting was led by Deputy Foreign Minister Ho Xuan Son, while the Cambodian delegation was headed by Var Kimhong, a senior minister in charge of border affairs. The two sides reviewed work on demarcation and border-marker placing between 2006 and 2015, during which the two countries were able to identify boundaries along 920km of the border’s total length of 1,137km.  The meeting took place in an atmosphere of friendship, heartiness, frankness and mutual understanding, the ministry said. This function was held following a violent border incident that occurred at 2:20 pm on June 28, when a group of about 250 Cambodians traveled past border marker No. 203 and then crossed deep into Vietnamese territory in Moc Hoa District of the southwestern province of Long An. About 20 Vietnamese tried to stop the group of Cambodians when the intruders reached 400 meters beyond the border marker, bringing flags and sticks along with them, said Huynh Trung Kien, a local. Despite the fact that these locals stood in a line as a barrier, the intruders moved forward and then assaulted the Vietnamese with sticks, crash helmets and flag poles, injuring seven locals, Kien said. It was not until 3:15 pm, when Vietnamese border guards and militiamen arrived, that the extremists halted the attack and left Vietnamese territory. After the incident, Vietnamese foreign ministry spokesperson Binh said at a press briefing on June 30 that Vietnam strongly criticized the said violent actions by Cambodian extremists. Such actions broke both Vietnam and Cambodia’s laws, as well as treaties and agreements signed by both sides, and affected the progress of demarcation and the sound relationship between the two countries, the spokesperson said. “We request that Cambodian authorities take measures to satisfactorily settle the incident and prevent similar actions from recurring in the future in order to ensure the smooth implementation of border delineation and marker planting for the common interest of both peoples,” he said. Among these Cambodian extremists were a number of parliamentarians from the opposition Cambodia National Rescue Party, according to the Vietnamese foreign ministry. TUOI TRE NEWS