NEW accusations have surfaced of Vietnamese backed by naturalised Americans plotting to topple the Hanoi Government from Cambodia.
The claims came as Vietnam yesterday confirmed the expulsion of two Vietnamese-Americans jailed for trying to overthrow the Communist Party leadership.
The Interior Ministry told US diplomats to get Nguyen Tan Tri and Nguyen Quang Liem out of the country by tomorrow. The two are in Ho Chi Minh City's maximum security Chi Hoa prison.
They will be freed on their return to the US, with Washington refusing to accept they have committed any crime. A Foreign Ministry spokesman said their release was made at the request of the US.
Senior State Department officials had repeatedly said the pair's detention was interference in non-violent politics, and the case loomed as a sticking point in new Hanoi-Washington ties.
It comes ahead of several high-profile US visits to Hanoi this month, including a historic tour by former defence secretary Robert McNamara, the architect of US military involvement in Vietnam.
Tri and Liem were sentenced in August with seven other members of the Tan Dai Viet Party, outlawed since communists took Saigon in 1975. The group members were all arrested in 1993 as they returned to Ho Chi Minh City to hold a conference on democracy.