US to raise human rights when Vietnam president visits
HANOI - The United States will raise human rights concerns when Vietnam's President Nguyen Minh Triet visits Washington this summer, a senior US diplomat said here Tuesday.
Relations between the former enemies had seen "significant forward progress," said US Deputy Assistant Secretary of State for East Asia and the Pacific Eric John, on a three-day visit to the communist country.
But the envoy, who visited a dissident Buddhist monk on his trip, also stressed Washington's concern about Vietnam's recent arrests of several regime critics and the jailing of a prominent pro-democracy activist.
When Triet visits the United States in coming months, both sides would discuss a range of issues, John said, adding that "one issue that's a critical component of that relationship is human rights for the United States."
"Vietnam has reached a level of development where it should be confident enough to allow the space necessary for a greater political discourse," John told a Hanoi media briefing.
"In that sense it just doesn't seem logical to me or the US government why it would imprison people for trying to contribute to that political discourse."
The State Department said on March 30 it was "deeply troubled" by an eight-year jail term a Vietnamese court handed to dissident Roman Catholic priest Father Nguyen Van Ly for "spreading propaganda" against the state.
Pressure has risen in Washington recently for the Bush administration to take a tougher line against Hanoi on human rights, with prominent Senators
John Kerry and Edward Kennedy most recently voicing their concern.
John on Monday visited Thich Quang Do, the 78-year-old deputy leader of the outlawed Unified Buddhist Church of Vietnam. Do, according to supporters, urged the United States to link economic relations with human rights.
But John said, "We already have a process for dealing with human rights issues in Vietnam," including embassy contacts and a regular human rights dialogue, with the next meeting scheduled for April 24 in Washington.
"There's been some incidents that we've viewed with regret recently," he said. "But we think that the process we've set up for handling human rights has yielded over the long run improvements in human rights."
Agence France Presse - April 10, 2007.
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