U.S. President Barack Obama on Monday, May 23 scrapped a Cold War-era ban on weapons sales to Vietnam, as ties between the former foes grow closer thanks to trade and mutual fears of Chinese expansion in disputed seas, AFP reports.
The announcement, made at the start of Obama's three-day visit to Vietnam, could strengthen Hanoi's hand against Beijing, which has been increasingly assertive in its claims to contested areas of the South China Sea.
"Over the past century, our two nations have known cooperation and then conflict, painful separation, and a long reconciliation," Obama said at a press conference alongside Vietnam's President Tran Dai Quang.
The move, Obama added, was not prompted by China's regional manoeuvres but came as the countries entered a "new moment" taking them towards a "normalisation" of ties, AFP says.
Quang welcomed the rollback of the ban, hailing the shared "common concerns and interests" that now bind the two countries.
The Obama administration has pitched this week's trip as an opportunity to push ties beyond the period of rapprochement, with Vietnam a vital plank in America's much vaunted pivot to the Asia-Pacific.
The visit is Obama's first to the country — and the third by a sitting president since the end of the Vietnam War in 1975. Direct US involvement in the conflict ended in 1973.
Obama said he was "moved" to see thousands of locals lining Hanoi's streets, craning with smartphones in hand for a view of his motorcade.
