Vietnam’s prime minister to visit U.S.

updated 7:19 a.m. ET May 5, 2005

CANBERRA, Australia - Vietnam’s prime minister said on Thursday he plans to travel to the United States next month in what would be the highest-level visit by a Vietnamese leader since the end of the war between the two countries 30 years ago.

Prime Minister Phan Van Khai said arrangements were being made for him to visit Washington in June. It was not immediately clear who Khai would meet with.

“Thirty years has passed since the end of the war; this is the first-ever visit by a leader of a unified Vietnam to the United States,” Khai told reporters on the first day of a visit to Australia.

Communist Vietnam recently marked the 30^th anniversary of the war’s end with a colorful parade of floats — some emblazoned with American business logos — down the same boulevard where North Vietnamese tanks rolled to victory against a U.S.-backed government.

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In November 2003, Vietnam’s Defense Minister Pham Van Tra met with Secretary of Defense Donald H. Rumsfeld in Washington, becoming the first senior military official of Hanoi’s government to visit the United States.

Vietnam’s Deputy Prime Minister Vu Khoan traveled to Washington a month later to sign a landmark aviation deal between the two countries. Deputy Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung was in Washington in 2001 for a ceremony for the landmark bilateral trade agreement between the U.S. and Vietnam.

Khai rejected suggestions that the visit was to strengthen defense and strategic ties as part of a wider policy of containing the power and influence of China.

“The purpose of my visit to the United States is to elevate our relationship to a higher plane in a new situation and we don’t take into consideration as such the factor of China,” he said.

Vietnam has a prime minister, a president and a politically powerful leader of the Communist Party.

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