Business, trade to dominate Vietnam president's US visit

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HANOI, June 17 (AFP): Business and trade are expected to top the agenda during the first visit this week by a post-war Vietnamese head of state to the United States, despite disagreements over human rights.
US President George W Bush and Vietnamese counterpart Nguyen Minh Triet are due to oversee the signing of a pact at the White House Friday aiming to boost two-way trade now worth almost 10 billion dollars a year.
Major business deals are expected in energy, telecommunications, information technology, financial services and other sectors, said Adam Sitkoff, executive director of the American Chamber of Commerce in Hanoi.
"We anticipate a number of agreements important to the business community to be concluded during the president's visit," said Sitkoff on the eve of Triet's trip that starts Monday in New York and also takes him to Los Angeles.
Seattle-based aircraft maker Boeing has been in talks to sell 787 long-haul jets to Vietnam Airlines, which would allow the state-run carrier to modernise its fleet and make non-stop flights to the United States.
"The two sides are preparing very actively for the conclusion of a business contract during this visit," said Vietnam's Foreign Ministry spokesman Le Dung, cautioning that a deal depends on talks between the airline and Boeing.
Triet's June 18-23 trip follows Bush's November visit to Vietnam, which joined the World Trade Organisation (WTO) in January and is seeing economic growth above 8 per cent a year, second in East Asia only to China.
Since Vietnam's WTO entry, a series of arrests and trials of dissidents in the communist country have clouded relations, and the White House has indicated Bush will express his "deep concern" to Triet.
But the Vietnamese president -- who has freed two prominent pro-democracy activists in the immediate lead-up to the trip -- predicted that growing economic links between the former enemies will dominate.