Vietnam, US mark 10 years of diplomatic ties
HANOI - Marking 10 years of normal diplomatic ties, a visiting US presidential envoy joined Vietnam's state media in hailing cooperation between the two former foes but also evoked lingering frictions.
"It is very important to recognise that we have 10 years of normalised relations," US Deputy Secretary of Veterans Affairs Gordon Mansfield told a press conference in Hanoi.
But he added there were issues the two countries still needed to discuss including religious rights in Vietnam and Hanoi's demands the US offer compensation for using Agent Orange during the Vietnam War. The chemical defoliant is believed to have left a large number of people maimed.
Mansfield also said the two sides were pursuing cooperation on the search for Americans missing in action (MIA) and pledged help to Vietnam's own efforts to trace its MIAs.
In Hanoi, he met foreign ministry officials, national assembly members and veterans.
Former US president
Bill Clinton opened relations with Hanoi on July 11, 1995, two decades after the end of the war that left three million Vietnamese and 58,000 Americans dead. Hanoi responded in kind the next day.
Since then bilateral trade has reached nearly seven billion dollars per year and military exchanges were also agreed during the recent US visit of Prime Minister Phan Van Khai, the first by a Vietnamese government leader since the war.
Vietnam now hopes for US support in its bid to join the World Trade Organisation this year and will host an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation summit next year, which the US president is expected to attend.
Khai's US trip was, however, dogged by concerns in the United States over Vietnam's record on human rights and religious freedoms.
Earlier Tuesday, the Sai Gon Giai Phong daily quoted leading lawmaker Ton Nu Thi Ninh as saying "human rights is not an obstacle but a criterion which helps form a grown-up relationship ... If there are differences and disagreements, the two countries can hold frank discussions to solve them."
The labour daily Lao Dong said: "The coexistence of both cooperation and struggle in a foreign relationship, especially with the US, is a normal fact. It is because Vietnam has accepted cooperation to go together with struggle."
Within Vietnam, there is also debate over relations with the former enemy, a topic that will lead the agenda of next year's Communist Party Congress.
Carl Thayer, an Australian expert on Vietnam, said the Communist Party is still divided on how quickly to further ties with Washington.
Party factions will "either push for more rapid engagement with America or ... slow the pace of engagement," Thayer said.
The fate of Vietnam's ongoing attempts to gain early entry to the WTO will weigh heavily on inner-party debates, he told AFP.
"Khai's visit will be judged a 'great success' if Vietnam can obtain America's go-ahead for WTO membership by the end of September 2005," he said.
Agence France Presse - July 12, 2005.
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