U.S. President Barack Obama on Sunday headed for his first visit to Vietnam, a trip aimed at sealing the transformation of an old enemy into a new partner to help counter China’s growing assertiveness in the region, Euronews reported. 

Four decades after a war with Vietnam that deeply divided opinion in America, Obama aims to boost defence and economic ties with the country’s communist rulers while also prodding them on human rights, aides say.

His visit has been preceded by a debate in Washington over whether Obama should use the three-day visit starting Monday to roll back an arms embargo on Hanoi, one of the last vestiges of wartime animosity.

That would anger Beijing, which resents U.S. efforts to forge stronger military bonds with its neighbours amid rising tensions in the disputed South China Sea. But there was no immediate word of a final U.S. decision on the issue.

Vietnam’s poor human rights record is a sticking point, but the Obama administration appears increasingly swayed toward giving Hanoi some leeway to build its deterrent against Beijing.

Obama’s visit follows what the Pentagon called an “unsafe” intercept by Chinese fighter jets of a U.S. military reconnaissance plane over the South China Sea on Tuesday.

Vietnam’s government earlier this month said lifting the embargo would show mutual trust and that buying arms from its partners was “normal”.

As a sign of the capitalism that now thrives in Vietnam, some opportunistic businesses are using pictures of a smiling Obama to sell their products.

Bilateral trade has swelled 10 times over since ties were normalised in 1995 to around $45 billion now. Vietnam is Southeast Asia’s biggest exporter to the United States, with textiles and electronics the largest volumes.

Source: MENA