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Barack Obama

United States President Barack Obama has lifted a decades-old arms embargo on Vietnam, looking to bolster a former bitter enemy his government now sees as a crucial partner.

Obama announced the full removal of the embargo after arriving in the communist country yesterday, saying that the move was intended as a step towards normalising relations and eliminating a “lingering vestige of the Cold War”.

“At this stage both sides have developed a level of trust and cooperation,” Obama said.

Obama is seeking to strike a balance with Vietnam as China tries to strengthen claims to disputed territory in the South China Sea, one of the world’s most important waterways.

Lifting the embargo will be seen as a psychological boost for Vietnam’s leaders as they look to counter a resurgent China. Vietnamese President Tran Dai Quang thanked Obama for lifting the embargo.

Vietnam has not bought anything, but removing the remaining restrictions shows relations are fully normalised and opens the way to deeper security cooperation.

Four decades after the fall of Saigon, now called Ho Chi Minh City, and two decades after relations were restored, Obama is eager to upgrade relations with an emerging power whose rapidly expanding middle class beckons as a promising market for US goods and an offset to China’s strength. “Very big commercial deals are being signed here numbering in the billions of dollars,” Marga Ortigas, reporting from Hanoi, said. “These are the biggest deals signed by Vietnam.”

One of the biggest deals was an $11.3bn purchase by VietJet airlines of 100 aircrafts from the US firm Boeing. Obama also announced several other deals.

Meanwhile, Obama yesterday confirmed that Taliban chief Mullah Akhtar Mansour was killed in a US air strike, hailing his death as an “important milestone” in efforts to bring peace to Afghanistan.

“We’ve removed the leader of an organisation that has continued to plot against and unleash attacks on American and Coalition forces, to wage war against the Afghan people, and align itself with extremist groups like Al-Qaeda,” the US president said in a statement.

Obama, who is on a three day visit to Vietnam, said Mansour had rejected efforts “to seriously engage in peace talks and end the violence that has taken the lives of countless innocent Afghan men, women and children.”

He called on the Taliban’s remaining leadership to engage in peace talks as the “only real path” to ending the attritional conflict.

Mansour, who was elevated to the leadership of the Taliban after a bitter power struggle, was killed on Saturday in a remote part of Pakistan’s western Balochistan province.

The raid was the first known US assault on a top Afghan Taliban leader on Pakistani soil and dealt a heavy blow to the militant group which, had expanded its operations under Mansour’s guidance.

Pakistan, which has long been accused of nurturing the Afghan Taliban, has lambasted the United States over the drone attack, calling it a violation of its sovereignty.

In his statement, Obama said American forces would continue to go after threats on Pakistani soil.

“We’ll work on shared objectives with Pakistan, where terrorists that threaten all our nations must be denied safe haven,” he said. — AFP