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Bush to meet Vietnamese leader

US President George W. Bush was to meet his Vietnamese counterpart for talks yesterday amid pressure from US lawmakers and activist groups to address human rights abuses in the southeast Asian state.

Vietnamese President Nguyen Minh Triet, on a landmark visit to the US, directly faced a barrage of complaints on the alleged abuses when he visited Capitol Hill on Thursday for closed-door talks with lawmakers.

US House of Representatives Speaker Nancy Pelosi led a bipartisan group of lawmakers to the talks dominated by the subject of Hanoi's crackdown on dissidents, religious leaders and democracy activists, Congressional staffers said.

Triet's six-day US visit which began on Monday is the first by a Vietnamese head of state to Hanoi's once-mortal enemy since the end of the US' unsuccessful fight to stop the communist takeover of South Vietnam more than three decades ago.

The former enemies on Thursday inked a trade and investment framework agreement (TIFA), prelude to a full-blown free trade agreement.

"The TIFA signing marks another important step forward for both countries in the steady expansion of our economic relations," said deputy US Trade Representative Karan Bhatia, who signed the pact with Vietnamese Deputy Minister of Trade Nguyen Cam Tu in Washington.

The agreement came six months after Washington restored normal trading ties with its former enemy, paving the way for Vietnam to join the WTO in January.

Even after the White House indicated that Bush would raise the human rights question with Triet, there was no let-up in the expression of concerns by lawmakers and activist groups.

A group of US senators urged Bush in a letter on Thursday to "make human dignity a priority topic of conversation" with Triet and use growing US-Vietnam ties as leverage "to pressure" Hanoi to respect human rights and religious freedom.

Hanoi has recently mounted a sweeping crackdown on the emerging pro-democracy movement in Vietnam, resulting in a wave of arrests and detention of more than 30 political dissidents, civil rights activists, labor union organizers and writers, the seven senators said.

Over the past two months alone, seven people were sentenced to long-term imprisonment, including a Roman Catholic priest, Father Nguyen Van Ly, who was photographed being muzzled by police at his own trial.

Ly was sentenced to eight years in jail for his pro-democracy activism and has become an international cause celebre.

Only six out of 4,000 banned churches in Vietnam are permitted to register for operation under Vietnamese law, the lawmakers said.

Reporters Without Borders, a press freedom watchdog group, in a separate letter to Bush, called on the US leader to intercede on behalf of nine cyber-dissidents and journalists in prison in Vietnam.

The US Commission on International Religious Freedom, a bipartisan federal agency, highlighted in its letter various restrictions targeted on minority ethnic and religious groups.

The Vietnamese government "views peaceful advocacy for legal and political reforms, as well as religious freedom, as national security threats," commission chairwoman Felice Gaer wrote.

"This is not a firm foundation on which to proceed with normal bilateral relations with the United States or any other country," she wrote.

Vietnamese-American pro-democracy groups are planning large protests outside the White House during the meeting.

Triet has said that Hanoi arrested dissidents and activists "not because of their political opinion but because they carried out acts against the national security."

Two prominent Vietnamese pro-democracy activists were released shortly before the trip.

The Washington-based World Bank meanwhile said yesterday it had approved more than US$300 million in loans for Vietnam to support reforms, boost university standards and build roads and bridges.
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