Vietnam's president gets earful

Members of both parties beseech the leader to improve his country's record on human rights.

 

Friday, June 22, 2007

By KATHRINE SCHMIDT

The Orange County Register

 

WASHINGTON– House leaders of both parties had human rights and religious freedom on their minds Thursday when they met with the president of Vietnam.

Speaker Nancy Pelosi and Rep. Ed Royce were among the lawmakers who spoke with President Nguyen Minh Triet in an hour-long closed meeting on Capitol Hill.

Triet will visit President Bush at the White House this morning and then fly to Southern California, where he speaks to business leaders in Dana Point later in the day. His visit to the United States, the first ever by a Vietnamese president, comes in the wake of what opponents call a crackdown on democratic movements and religious freedom in Vietnam that has stirred protests from Little Saigon to the nation's Capitol.

"The meeting focused on human rights issues, including political expression and religious freedom in Vietnam, and the desire for greater economic cooperation between our two nations," said Nadeam Elshami, deputy communications director for Pelosi, D-San Francisco.

According to Royce, R-Fullerton, lawmakers repeatedly brought up the situations of Vietnamese dissidents arrested by the government. One such case was that of Catholic priest Father Nguyen Van Ly, recently sentenced to eight years in prison in what critics called a show trial. Vietnam has said it only jails those who break the law.

Royce, said the Vietnamese president's responses were "very evasive" and marked by "propaganda" and statements that those who have been jailed threatened Vietnam's national security.

"We've got to see a stop to this conduct if the relationship between our countries is going to improve," Royce told reporters in a telephone conference afterwards. "Member after member asked about religious freedom and that particular trial."

Economic relations between the two countries have grown closer lately. A two-way pact that netted $10 billion in trade between the nations last year.

"I think that the (Vietnamese) emissaries are receiving a message from the (U.S.) president and U.S. Congress, and to a certain extent from the public, that they are appalled by the crackdown," Royce said. "I think that's an impression they will take back to Hanoi."

 

 

 

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