WASHINGTON, June 21 (Xinhuanet) -- US President George W. Bush on Tuesday met at the White House with Vietnamese Prime Minister PhanVan Khai, the highest-ranking Vietnamese official to visit the United States since the end of the Vietnam War 30 years ago.

    During their talks, Bush and Khai discussed issues of common concern, including economic and trade cooperation, Vietnam's bid to join the World Trade Organization, military and security cooperation, and the fight against HIV/AIDS.

    "The prime minister graciously invited me to Vietnam. I will be going in 2006," when Vietnam hosts the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, Bush told reporters with Khai at the side.

    After the Vietnam War ended in April 1975, as long as 20 years passed before the two countries established diplomatic relations in 1995.

US President George W. Bush on Tuesday met at the White House with Vietnamese Prime Minister PhanVan Khai, the first Vietnamese leader to visit Washington since the Vietnam War. (AFP)

    The year 2000, an important year for bilateral relations, witnessed the visit to Hanoi by then Defense Secretary William Cohen, the signing of a bilateral trade agreement, and the visit to Vietnam by then US President Bill Clinton, the first US top leader to visit the country since the end of the war.

    Current US-Vietnam relations are growing faster than in the 1990s. Khai's delegation of more than 200 people, including 81 businessmen, has clearly demonstrated Hanoi's eagerness to promote economic cooperation with Washington.

    "During the war, Vietnam and the United States were opponents. Now that 30 years have elapsed since the end of the war, it is our policy to put aside the past and look to the future and a better relationship between the two countries," Khai said in an interview with the Washington Post on the eve of his trip to the United States.

    What Khai said actually did not signal something new in Vietnam's policy toward the United States. In fact, it is what Hanoi has been doing since the beginning of the 21st century. A bilateral trade agreement signed in Washington on July 13, 2000 marked the full normalization of bilateral economic and trade relations between the two countries.

    The agreement envisages an opening of each country's markets and reductions in the tariffs, meaning "Most Favored Nation Status" exists between the United States and Vietnam. Vietnamese goods sent to the United States are taxed at about three percent instead of 40 percent which was imposed before the agreement came into effect in 2001.

    Thanks to the trade agreement, Khai said, Vietnam's trade with the United States rose from 1.5 billion dollars to 6.4 billion dollars in 2004, 20 times higher than it was a decade ago. Vietnamese exports to the United States have soared from 800 million dollars in 2001 to five billion dollars last year. In addition, a great number of American manufacturing giants, including Coca-Cola Company, Boeing Corporation, International Business Machines (IBM) have become investors in Vietnam.

    Comparing with his first presidential term, Bush has apparently devoted more efforts to improve bilateral relations. Prior to Khai's arrival, US Deputy Secretary of State Robert Zoellick and Assistant Defense Secretary Peter Rodman paid separate visits to Hanoi, where they had talks with Vietnamese government officials on preparations for Khai's visit and discussed military and security cooperation, government sources said.

    The United States needs Vietnam's cooperation on such issues as the fight against drug trafficking, anti-piracy and eventually nuclear non-proliferation, said Matthew P. Daley, former deputy assistant secretary of state for East Asian affairs and Pacific affairs and now president of the US-ASEAN Business Council.

    Despite great improvement in Washington-Hanoi ties, the two sides still face serious challenges. On the eve of Khai's arrival in Washington, White House spokesman Scott McClellan told reporters that Bush would press the Vietnamese leader to improve his country's human rights record, saying: "This will be an opportunity to talk about religious freedom and human rights concerns as well."

    In an apparent reference to US criticism of Vietnam's rights record, Khai told reporters Tuesday that both Bush and he "agreed that there remain differences between our two countries due to the different conditions that we have, the different histories and cultures."

    Looking back on what he said in an interview on June 16, the Vietnamese prime minister said firmly: "We have no prisoners of conscience in Vietnam...The history of Vietnam for thousands of years has shown that there has never been a religious conflict in this nation."

    In his latest remarks about political differences between Vietnam and the United States, Khai stressed: "We should work together, through constructive dialogues based upon mutual respect to reduce the distances, in order to improve our bilateral relations." Enditem