Business deals will dominate the first visit to the United States next week by a post-war Vietnam president, but both sides are braced to discuss sensitive issues of jailed political activists and victims of "agent orange".
President Nguyen Minh Triet takes a large business delegation to New York, Washington and Los Angeles from June 18 to June 23 when deals will be signed in the energy, financial services, IT, and telecommunication sectors. "The visit will help to bring US-Vietnam relations to a new stage of development, depth and more effectiveness," Ministry of Foreign Affairs spokesman Le Dung said at a briefing on Thursday.
The governments will sign a Trade and Investment Framework Agreement, which is used to expand trade and resolve disputes, US and Vietnamese officials said, while state-run Vietnam Airlines and Boeing Co were negotiating aircraft contracts.
Hanoi and Washington have signed two trade deals in the past six years, agreements that paved the way for Vietnam to accede to the World Trade Organisation in January.
Two-way trade is worth $9.7 billion and the United States is the biggest export market for impoverished Vietnam, which has annnual economic growth of about 8 percent a year, but an annual per capita income of about $780.
Triet's first events on Monday are the same day as a federal appeals court in New York hears arguments on whether Vietnamese plaintiffs may sue 32 US manufacturers of "agent orange" defoliant sprayed by the Americans for a decade up to 1971. The war ended in 1975 but Hanoi and Washington did not establish diplomatic relations until 20 years later.
In the build-up to the hearing, a Vietnamese delegation is touring the United States screening documentaries of disfigurement and other health problems caused by dioxin, a small compound within the "agent orange" herbicide that is one of the most toxic compounds known.
The dioxin issue and one-party Vietnam's arrests and jailing of political opponents are thorns in the countries' friendship, but the relationship is mature enough not to be seriously harmed by them, analysts said.
Washington maintains there is no scientifically proven link between spraying and the millions Vietnam says are disabled. "Due to the proximity of the court hearing I expect President Triet will be diplomatic, even though it is still very sensitive and important to the Vietnamese," said Tom Leckinger, country representative in Hanoi for Veterans for America.
In the past year, the two countries have set a new tone in dealing with cleaning up toxins from former US air bases where they were stored in barrels marked with an orange stripe. Government agencies and non-government organisations have plans to start clean up in the central city of Danang this year. In late May, Bush signed a bill that provides $3 million toward health and environment issues stemming from dioxin.
Triet, 64, is the first Vietnamese head of state to visit the United States since the communists unified the country 32 years ago and he will hear criticism and face protests. At least seven activists have been jailed since March in half-day trials. The activists, who include a priest, lawyers and small businessmen, were convicted of "spreading propaganda against the state", a crime in Vietnam.
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