Vietnam seeks to buy US weapons and says China should not be alarmed
US ban on lethal arms exports enforced since communist victory in Vietnam War
Vietnam says it wants to be able to buy weapons from the United States and that China should not be alarmed.
As relations between the US and Vietnam warm, the US is moving closer to lifting a ban on lethal arms exports applied after the communist victory in the Vietnam war.
Vietnamese Deputy Prime Minister Pham Binh Minh said it had been nearly 20 years since Washington and Hanoi normalised relations, and so it was "abnormal" to retain the ban.
"If we do not buy weapons from the United States, we [would] still buy from other countries," Minh said at the Asia Society. "Why should China bother about that?"
Despite fraternal ties between the ruling parties of Vietnam and China, tensions spiked this year after China deployed a deep-sea oil rig near the disputed Paracel islands. Vessels from the two sides repeatedly rammed each other near the rig. The stand-off triggered anti-China protests and riots in Vietnam.
Minh, who is also Vietnam's foreign minister and is attending the annual gathering of world leaders at the United Nations in New York, said there was an unprecedented risk of military conflict in Asian seas. But he was careful to avoid direct criticism of China.