Prime Minister Hun Sen is slated to travel to Vietnam soon to meet with senior officials, the Ministry of Foreign Affairs has announced, a trip that will follow a meeting on border affairs between the two states that concluded without reaching an accord in Phnom Penh on Tuesday.

The meeting had sought to iron out several specific points of contention relating to Cambodia’s eastern frontier, but parties failed to even agree on a basic legal doctrine, attendees said. While the Foreign Ministry, in a statement released on Tuesday, said the premier would travel to Vietnam for high-level talks on an unspecified date, it was equally vague about the purpose of the visit, and did not mention the border explicitly.

Meanwhile, Vietnam’s Foreign Ministry yesterday responded to Cambodian criticisms of “insulting” posts by Vietnamese citizens on the premier’s Facebook page, which had accused him of failing to support his neighbour on the South China Sea issue.

In a statement, Vietnam said the views in the comments were not its own, and condemned “the use of rights . . . to express ideas in order to insult an individual or show an inciting attitude”.