AFP, WASHINGTON: The White House is considering lifting a decades-old arms embargo against Vietnam in time for President Barack Obama’s visit to the booming Southeast Asian nation this month.
As both countries warily eye China’s military build-up in the disputed South China Sea, officials said Obama is weighing an end to the Cold War-era ban on lethal weapons exports.
Obama begins his first visit to Vietnam on May 21, some 41 years after the North Vietnamese army and its Viet Cong allies marched into Saigon, humiliating the world’s preeminent superpower.
Now the former foes—who fought a murderous 19-year war that defined both nations and killed untold thousands—are putting ideology aside and gradually building deeper trade, military and political ties.
Washington and Hanoi have been pushed together by Vietnam’s increasingly vibrant 80-million-people-strong economy, Obama’s “pivot to Asia” and a mutual desire to limit China’s regional clout.
Under President Xi Jinping, Beijing has taken a more assertive stance on territorial claims in the South China Sea—deploying materiel to the disputed Spratly Islands.
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AFP, BRASÍLIA: Brazilian President Dilma Rousseff was suspended Thursday to face impeachment, ceding power to her vice-president-turned-enemy Michel Temer in a political earthquake ending 13 years… 
Editor : M. Shamsur Rahman
Published by the Editor on behalf of Independent Publications Limited at Media Printers, 446/H, Tejgaon I/A, Dhaka-1215.
Editorial, News & Commercial Offices : Beximco Media Complex, 149-150 Tejgaon I/A, Dhaka-1208, Bangladesh. GPO Box No. 934, Dhaka-1000.
Editor : M. Shamsur Rahman
Published by the Editor on behalf of Independent Publications Limited at Media Printers, 446/H, Tejgaon I/A, Dhaka-1215.
Editorial, News & Commercial Offices : Beximco Media Complex, 149-150 Tejgaon I/A, Dhaka-1208, Bangladesh. GPO Box No. 934, Dhaka-1000.
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