US envoy leaving Vietnam calls rights issue disappointing

The outgoing US ambassador to Vietnam, Michael Marine, on Thursday said a lack of progress on human rights in the communist country was the biggest disappointment of his three-year tenure.

"I wish I could say it's improving, but I can't," he told his final media briefing in Hanoi. "Perhaps my biggest disappointment here is that we've not been able to expand the space for political dialogue in Vietnam."

Vietnam, a one-party-state, this year jailed a number of political activists who had called for non-violent political change toward a multi-party democracy, drawing protests from the United States and other countries.

Rallies dogged a June US visit by President Nguyen Minh Triet, the first to the United States by a Vietnamese state leader since the war ended in 1975.

Marine said religious freedoms had recently been expanded in Vietnam but he added: "If we are talking about the ability of people to engage in political activism, I can't be as positive, and in fact I'm a bit discouraged."

He pledged that the United States would keep up the human rights dialogue with Vietnam under his successor Michael Michalak, due to arrive this month.

"We have a long-term commitment to this, it is in Vietnam's interest for this to happen, and I believe it will happen," he said. "The question is when."

Vietnam's government says it does not punish dissidents, only people who break its laws, including the charge of spreading propaganda against the state, under which several dissidents were imprisoned this year.

Marine said: "To the extent that we are able to understand the Vietnamese legal system, there are laws on the books that allow the authorities to move against people for expressing their opinions, for organising in any way and for calling for political change.

"Those are fundamental human rights that I strongly believe are universal and should be enjoyed by the people of Vietnam."

The ambassador praised growing bilateral trade relations that were fully normalised last year, weeks before Vietnam -- an economy now growing at over 8 percent a year -- joined the World Trade Organisation in January.

"Economically, Vietnam is making major strides forward," said Marine. "The value of US-Vietnam two-way trade will exceed 10 billion dollars this year.

"The United States is Vietnam's top export market and its fourth largest foreign investor, and Vietnam expects to attract at least 15 billion dollars in foreign direct investment commitments this year."