The U.S. is willing to be a good partner of Vietnam, the state media said, citing outgoing Ambassador to the country Michael Michalak.
The American ambassador made the statement at the last press conference in Hanoi Jan. 6. He will hand over his tasks in Vietnam to newly-accredited Ambassador David B. Shear after four years since 2007.
Michalak expressed his optimistic about the Vietnam-U.S.’s relationship, especially improved cooperation in education, trade and security.
The bilateral trade rose to $15.4 billion in 2000 from $450 billion in 1995, and the American country is the biggest foreign investor in the Southeast Asian country.
The ambassador said he is proud of the two countries’ ties in education as the number of Vietnamese student in the U.S. tripled to 13,000 within three years, and the American country has granted 1,000 scholarships worth $75 million for Vietnam.
A number of American and Vietnam’s universities have cooperated in training and research. Some local universities have imported the American curriculum to educate Vietnamese students.
The defense ties of Vietnam and the U.S. have developed very fast, Michalak said, adding the two countries conducted the third annual negotiation on politics, security and defense and the first negotiation on defense policies in 2010.
In 2010, the U.S.’s Defense Secretary Robert Gates visited Vietnam and met with Vietnamese counterpart Phung Quang Thanh. The two sides agreed to cooperate in officer training, military medicine, and humanitarian rescue. A number of U.S.’s military ships made visited Vietnam, including aircraft carrier during the year.
The two countries still have different views on human rights and peaceful expression of personal view. The U.S. government has been a loud critic of Vietnam's human rights record, urging Hanoi to stop jailing pro-democracy dissidents and to allow followers of all religions to worship freely.
In a press conference last year, Michalak said he was concerned that the Vietnamese authoritarian regime increased harassment against human right, prodemocracy activists and online bloggers prior to the national congress of the communist party. (VoV, vietnamnet.vn)
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