Hanoi - Vietnamese Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung met with
Chinese leaders Wednesday in Beijing to discuss borders and seek to
strengthen often-strained ties with China, government officials said.
Dung, his wife and a high-ranking government delegation arrived in
Beijing Tuesday for his first official visit to China and the seventh
Asia-Europe Meeting, which is to be held Friday and Saturday.
Bui Hong Phuc, a former ambassador to China, said the purpose of
the visit was to sign an agreement to finish land border demarcation.
Dung also discussed with Chinese Premier Wen Jiabao how to deal
with Vietnam and China's dispute over the Spratly and Paracel Islands
in the South China Sea, Phuc said.
Unlike Communist Party chief Nong Duc Manh and President Nguyen
Minh Triet, Dung chose the United States for his first outbound trip
to boost trade and investment with Vietnam's former enemy on the
battlefield. Trade with the US accounts for up to 20 per cent of the
country's exports while the China market takes 15 per cent.
Last year, Vietnam-China trade increased to more than 15 billion
dollars and was expected to hit 21 billion dollars this year.
But Vietnam continues to run a trade deficit with China, which
climbed to 3.8 billion dollars in 2006 and 9 billion dollars in 2007.
It was predicted to reach 13 billion dollars in 2008.
Vietnam has a close but sometimes strained relationship with its
fellow Communist neighbour. China backed Hanoi during its fight for
independence and its war with the United States in the 1960s and
'70s, but the two countries fought a bloody border war in 1979 and
broke off diplomatic relations until 1991.
The two countries continue to dispute the ownership of the Spratly
and Paracel Islands in the South China Sea, whose surrounding waters
might contain substantial oil deposits.
Vietnam has sought to balance its relationship with China by
cultivating close relations with the US, with which it ran a
12-billion-dollar trade surplus in 2007.
Sources close to the US government said they expected Dung's trip
to show progress on hot-button issues between the two Asian countries
and that they welcomed such progress.
A former senior US official on South-East Asia said he expected
the visit to focus on improving trade and economic relations, 'an
important point given the fairly lopsided imbalance of trade.'
Hurdles remain in Hanoi's relations with both countries, including
differences on human rights and democracy with the United States and
land and sea borders with China.
USA
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