US Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld and his Vietnamese counterpart agreed yesterday to boost military exchanges between the former battlefield enemies, Pentagon officials said.
Vietnam is one of several Asian states that the Pentagon has built close ties with to conduct its war on terrorism and to hedge against a rising China, which Washington says is too secretive about its military spending and intentions.
"It was cordial and both sides agreed we want to expand these contacts," a senior Pentagon official said after Rumsfeld's hour-long meeting with Defense Minister Pham Van Tra.
The two sides agreed to share medical training under a Pentagon-funded programme and have "more visits at all levels," the official told reporters travelling with Rumsfeld on the second leg of a Southeast Asian visit.
US military ties with Hanoi, 31 years after the end of the Vietnam war and 11 years after the normalization of diplomatic ties, have warmed gradually with ship visits.
Rumsfeld, the second Pentagon chief to visit communist-run Vietnam since the fall of US ally South Vietnam in 1975, was due to meet Prime Minister Phan Van Khai later yesterday.
Rumsfeld, who also headed the Defense Department in the aftermath of the Vietnam War, last visited Hanoi in 1995 as a businessman.
"I hasten to congratulate you and the people of Vietnam for the amazing economic achievements that have occurred just in the last 11 years," Rumsfeld told Tra.
The military talks were held less than a week after the two countries signed a new trade pact that paves the way for Vietnam to join the WTO by year's end.
Meanwhile, US official said yesterday that the US won't compensate Vietnam's Agent Orange victims but will offer advice on dealing with the wartime defoliant.
When Rumsfeld met Defense Minister Pham Van Tra and military officials, the Vietnamese side had raised the issue of dioxin exposure and contamination from Agent Orange, the senior official said on the sidelines of the visit.
"What we can do is make scientific information available, historical archival information we might have, ... technical advice on how to deal with the situation," the official said.
"We're ready to do more. We agreed to sit down at the expert level and see what we can do," he said.
US forces widely sprayed Agent Orange, which contained the lethal chemical dioxin, in southern Vietnam during the conflict to deprive enemy guerrillas of forest cover and destroy food crops.
Vietnam says millions of its people have suffered a range of illnesses and birth defects as a result of the use of the chemical.
A New York court last year rejected a Vietnamese lawsuit against US chemical giants Monsanto and Dow Chemical, who manufactured the herbicide during the war. The Vietnamese side has appealed.
In April, visiting US Secretary of Veterans Affairs James Nicholson was pressed by Vietnamese journalists on why the US compensates its own veterans for health defects linked to the chemical, but not Vietnam's.
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