Hanoi: The Ministry of National Defence held a ceremony in Hanoi on April 8 to hand over the President's and the Defence Minister's decisions to send three officers to the United Nations (UN) peacekeeping missions in the Central African Republic, South Sudan and Abyei. The officers were deployed to replace their predecessors at the missions. Among them, one will serve as a military observer at the United Nations Multidimensional Integrated Stabilisation Mission in the Central African Republic (MINUSCA), another as a military observer at the United Nations Mission in South Sudan (UNMISS), and the only female as a logistics staff officer at the United Nations Interim Security Force for Abyei (UNISFA). Addressing the event, Deputy Minister of National Defence Sen. Lieut. Gen. Hoang Xuan Chien, who is also head of the ministry's steering committee for the participation in the UN peacekeeping operations, asked the three officers to quickly grasp the situation in their respective areas, properly perform their ass igned tasks, and improve their situation analysis and forecasting capacity. They were also required to strictly follow the Party, State and army's foreign policy, regulations of the Vietnam People's Army (VPA) and the UN as well as laws of the host countries. Chien requested the Vietnam Department of Peacekeeping Operations to coordinate with relevant agencies to continue personnel preparations for future deployment. To date, Vietnam has sent 799 officers, in both the forms of individual and unit, to UN peacekeeping operations at the three missions and the UN headquarters. They consist of 792 military officers and seven policemen./. Source: Vietnam News Agency