Hanoi - Vietnamese Foreign Minister Pham Gia Khiem will pay a six-day visit to the United States starting March 11, a government official said Thursday.
Khiem, who is also a deputy prime minister, is expected to hold talks with US Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice as well as business leaders and representatives of the Vietnamese community living in the US.
"The visit is aimed at enhancing the positive development in the relations between Vietnam and the US, promoting economic, trade, technology and education ties," Foreign Ministry spokesman Le Dung
said in Hanoi.
More than 30 after the end of the Vietnam War, former enemies Hanoi and Washington now enjoy friendly relations.
The US is Vietnam's biggest export market, with some 8 billion dollars in goods sent to the American market last year.
In June 2005, then-prime minister Phan Van Khai made a historic visit, meeting with US President George Bush, who was in Hanoi last November for the annual of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation
summit.
However, some anti-communist Vietnamese living in the US protested Khai's visit. Among the more than 1 million Vietnamese-Americans are former "boat people" - refugees who fled the communist regime after the 1975 North Vietnam victory.
