News-Info-Alerts

Re: VN Defense Minister to Visit US

From: POW-MIA InterNetwork

Date: August 12, 2003

"Vietnamese defense minister to visit U.S.

Agence France-Presse

Vietnamese defense Minister Phan Van Tra is expected to travel to the United States within the next few months for the first ever visit by the communist nation's top military officer, sources said Friday.

A tentative agreement has been reached between the U.S. Pentagon and the ministry for the visit to Washington by the general, who is a member of the Communist Party's elite 15-member Politburo, a U.S. source said.

Plans have also been drawn up for Admiral Thomas Fargo, commander of the U.S. Pacific Command, to visit Hanoi, and for the frigate USS Gary to make a port stop in Ho Chi Minh City in November, he said, requesting anonymity.

The U.S. embassy in the Vietnamese capital said it was unable to confirm or deny the information. "We don't comment on such visits," a spokesman said.

The Vietnamese foreign ministry said it was not able to provide any immediate comment.

Analysts say that if Tra's visit goes ahead it could mark a significant change in policy within the ranks of Vietnam's conservative military towards its former sworn enemy.

It would also reciprocate a visit by former U.S. defense secretary William Cohen, who made a three-day trip to Vietnam in March 2000 in a bid to develop a military-to-military relationship.

He was the first defense chief to visit the Southeast Asian nation since the end of the Vietnam War in 1975, which resulted in the deaths of over 58,000 Americans and around three million Vietnamese.

"Tra's trip would be very significant on the defense side of the bilateral relationship which has been markedly undeveloped," said Carl Thayer, a Vietnam watcher at the Australian defense Force Academy.

"This has long been on the cards. The Vietnamese owe a return visit by Cohen and are now doing so at a time when U.S. is dominant in the region with its the war on terrorism."

Thayer cautioned for the visit to take place both sides would have "to feel that something concrete will emerge from it in terms of greater military-to-military cooperation between the two countries."

Currently, military relations between the two countries revolve around the search for U.S. personnel missing in action from the war and other humanitarian programs, such as medical and demining training.

"Tra's visit would shift the major focus of the relationship away from the traditional focus on MIAs and move it to new areas," Thayer said.

Tra, who was appointed defense minister in 1997, would not, however, be the first high ranking military officer to visit the United States. In October 1998 Lieutenant-General Tran Hanh visited Washington and held talks with Cohen, while in September the following year a colonel traveled to the U.S. capital on a MIA archival research mission.

Formal U.S.-Vietnam diplomatic relations were only established in 1995, a year after then-president Bill Clinton lifted a trade embargo on the country. Despite burgeoning bilateral trade ties, relations remain lukewarm with Hanoi particularly suspicious of what it considers Washington's imperialist global foreign policy.

Thayer warned that Hanoi would most probably cancel the planned visits if the U.S. government initiated military action against Iran or tried to throw its weight about in a different arena.

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