February 3, 2010

Ambassador Michalak: Thank you very much. First off, I apologize for being late. I know to many of you this is the most important event of your day, but I have a few other events that I have to worry about.

I’m going to try to be very brief in my opening remarks so that we can get to questions and answers as quickly as possible.

With the American New Year behind us and the Vietnamese Tet Festival approaching, I want to take this opportunity first of all to wish you health, happiness and success in the coming year, and I want to take this opportunity to share with you some of the highlights of the U.S. Mission’s activities over the years. And many of these activities have been taken and carried out in partnership with the government of Vietnam to reach goals important to both countries.

I’ll also try during my introductory remarks to note some of our important goals for the coming year.

I’m please that our relationship continues to grow across the board based on friendship, mutual respect and cooperation on a wide range of issues and in the long term interests of both countries. In this regard in particular, I would like to take special note and thanks to the government of Vietnam and the people of Vietnam for the assistance that the people and the government of Vietnam are offering to those who have been impacted by the earthquake in Haiti. With over 150,000 people dead, this is a natural disaster of enormous proportions, and I know the United States is joining with other countries around the world headed by the United Nations to do what we can there. And once again, I want to thank the government and the people of Vietnam for playing their part in this effort.

It’s symbolic of the great expansion of our relationship that over the course of the past year we had President Triet visit the United States for the opening of the United Nations. We’ve had three Deputy Prime Ministers visiting the United States. We’ve had the Minister of Defense, the Minister of Agriculture and the Home Affairs Minister all coming to the United States to engage with their counterparts on issues of mutual interest.

It’s my belief that the U.S. and Vietnam have a common interest in a stable, secure and peaceful Asia Pacific region, and we’re looking for Vietnam to take an increasingly responsible leadership position in the region in global affairs, especially this year as Vietnam takes over the Chair of ASEAN.

We’re also looking to deepen our cooperation with Vietnam on regional issues through our Lower Mekong Initiative and through multilateral endeavors such as the Global Peacekeeping Operations Initiative.

And as part of our discussions, we continue to urge the government of Vietnam to be more responsive to its citizens at home and respectful to their rights of free speech and assembly, as well as their rights to worship freely. In this regard we’ve taken note of and expressed clearly our concerns about what appear to be efforts to suppress the peaceful expression of political views as I have indicated recently in statements to the press.

Let me talk a little bit more about a couple of areas. In the economic area I think we’ve seen huge progress in our relationship over the past year, and this is the first year where the United States has actually been the largest foreign investor in Vietnam. We began our discussions and negotiations with Vietnam on a Bilateral Investment Treaty and we look forward to continuing and hopefully finishing those discussions during the coming year.

We’re also going to begin our discussions on a TransPacific Partnership which is a Subregional Free Trade Agreement, a TransPacific Subregional Free Trade Agreement in which Vietnam is participating as an observer, and we hope for good results in those discussions during the coming year.

As you know, one of the most pressing issues for Vietnam’s economic development is economic infrastructure, and at the end of last year we submitted a proposal to the government with a way forward to establish various infrastructure funds and how to structure a plan to get a number of bankable projects in line so that Vietnam can proceed a little bit faster with its infrastructure development. We have had good early response from the government of Vietnam and we hope to continue our discussions with the government during this year and maybe come up with a plan sometime around the middle or towards the end of this year.

We continue to support the Prime Minister’s efforts to streamline and to carry out administrative reform known as Project 30, and we anxiously await the issuance of the first tranche of 236 or whatever it is laws that will either be eliminated or streamlined. We continue to work with the government on various legal and economic reforms in order to improve the rule of law and legal infrastructure here, to continue to improve the investment environment here in Vietnam.

I could probably go on about economics all afternoon, but let me switch to education since you know that that is one of the priorities that is near and dear to my heart, and I think we’ve made some excellent progress in education this year as well.

You’ve all heard me talk about my goal to double the number of students going from Vietnam to the United States and I’m sick and tired of talking about that. So I have a new number for you, and the new number says that we have actually tripled the number of students going from Vietnam to the United States over the past three years. This past year we also issued the Education Task Force Report, the Vietnam-U.S. Education Task Force completed it work and sent its report with recommendations on expanding student exchanges between the two countries, expanding relations between the educational institutions in the two countries, and working on ways to establish American style universities here in Vietnam.

I also want to let you know that we hope very soon after Tet to be able to formally open a number of Education USA Student Advisory Centers. These will be opened up here at the embassy in Hanoi and at the consulate in Ho Chi Minh City. At these Education USA Centers you’ll be able to find a lot of information about scholarships, a lot of information about where to go and study, and also you’ll find information for parents about American educational institutions, and there will be people sort of like consultants there who can help individual students figure out exactly what educational path might be best for them.

I think many of you are aware that last month we held the third in our annual Education Conferences. This was the largest Education Conference that we’ve ever held here in Vietnam, and probably in all Southeast Asia. We talked about all the issues I’ve just mentioned in terms of promoting exchanges and facilitating contacts, establishing an American university. Participants all wanted to talk about university autonomy, academic freedom, accreditation, and I believe all of these topics were discussed at the Education Conference.

Once again, I just want to thank the government of Vietnam, particularly the Ministry of Education and Trade and the Vietnam National University in Hanoi for their participation. It was also our first chance to work with the newly appointed Standing Vice Minister Pham Vu Luan. I think it all worked together to have a very good conference.

Now of course we have to talk about human rights. That’s my other great priority here. And discussion of human rights is a central aspect of our relationship with the government of Vietnam. We’ve had a number of discussions on human rights with the government of Vietnam throughout the year, both here in Hanoi and also in Washington. We have a regularly scheduled human rights dialogue and also, for instance, in October when Secretary Clinton met with Deputy Prime Minister and Foreign Minister Phạm Gia Khiêm, we also discussed human rights. We recognize and applaud the progress that Vietnam has made in some areas such as improving the ability of new religious groups to practice their faith.

We are concerned, however, over some human rights practices in other areas. For example, we remain opposed to efforts to criminalize free speech and dissent.

In our discussions with the government of Vietnam we have noted that without a free media and functioning civil society, it will be difficult for Vietnam to tackle many of the issues it faces such as education reform, corruption, and environmental degradation.

Some of you may have noticed that Secretary of State Clinton gave an excellent speech about a week or so ago on internet freedom, and this has also been a subject of our discussions with the government of Vietnam.
So we continue to have these discussions, and also we continue to work together on certain projects such as our efforts to support the National Assembly in its efforts to develop an independent research capacity similar to the Congressional Research Service.

We also support some of the efforts of the government to improve the atmosphere for NGOS. For instance, Catholic Relief Services has successfully begun its efforts in community participation and governance by fostering local parent/teacher associations in various communities throughout Vietnam.

I’m really sorry to keep going on like this. I know that you guys have got questions. But just bear with me, I’m going to end up by talking a little bit about this as the 15th Anniversary Year or reestablishment of relations between the U.S. and Vietnam, and then I’ll shut up and get to your questions. [Laughter].

As you can imagine, we’re very excited about the prospects for this year celebrating the 15th Anniversary of diplomatic relations with Vietnam, especially as it coincides with the 1000th Anniversary of Thang Long-Hanoi. We expect to highlight some of the accomplishments that I’ve just talked about in education, in joint initiatives to combat disease, efforts to increase science and technology, and a number of other areas.

We are working on a Joint Academic Symposium that will provide a forum to have good discussions on the Vietnam-U.S. relations for the past 15 years and looking forward to the next 15 years. We can hardly wait for the completion of our project to restore the historic O Quan Chuong Gate here in Hanoi which was a special project that we particularly were able to get money for to have it finished by the end of the 1000th Anniversary year. And of course we’ll have some cultural exchange visits, including a number of different concerts. We have the first one coming in March with the Southwest Chamber Music coming to Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh for a week of workshops and concerts. I understand we’re going to have folk singers, and maybe even some rap folks and some hip-hop folks, so it’s going to be a broad spectrum of events that we hope that you will enjoy and we hope to use to commemorate 15 great years of having a good relationship with Vietnam.

I’m sorry I’ve talked so long. Your turn, guys.

Question: Thank you very much for your opening remarks. This year is a very important year for Vietnam and to Vietnam-U.S. relations. As the two countries are going to celebrate the 15th Anniversary of their relations do you think that this year is a good opportunity for President Obama to come to Vietnam? And how realistic do you think the chance for that visit will be?

Ambassador Michalak: Let me answer the first question. The answer to the first question is I sure as heck hope so. [Laughter]. Answering the second one is a little bit harder. To be very truthful, I just don’t know the answer to that question, but I remain optimistic. I’m still working hard to make it happen. And I know that there are many people in the government of Vietnam that are also working very hard to try to make this happen. So we’ll all do our best.
I would imagine, I think there is a good chance that Secretary of State Clinton may be coming at some point, probably during the summer. Again, nothing is final. But for the President, let’s wait and see, and let’s all keep writing him letters telling him to come to see Vietnam.

Question: I am from Lao Dong - Labor - Newspaper. I have two questions.

The first question, you say that the U.S. has some proposals and plans to help Vietnam develop its infrastructure. So what areas will the U.S. provide support and can you give a number of capital involved?
The second question, you mentioned that the U.S. is also working with the Vietnamese National Assembly to help set up an independent research center. Can you talk about the organization and the function of the center, and what is the response from the Vietnamese side?

Ambassador Michalak: Let me take the second one first because it’s a little bit shorter answer. For some time the National Assembly has been interested in setting up its own capability to do research and to give the National Assembly information on various issues that affect Vietnamese society. In the United States the U.S. Congress has a body called the Congressional Research Service that performs this function. Various representatives of the National Assembly and the Office of the National Assembly have been to the United States to talk with people from the CRS, the Congressional Research Service. We’ve had some representatives from CRS coming here to talk with the National Assembly. We just recently received approval to go ahead, or we both just agreed, we both agreed to do a project to carry this out further and to offer some technical assistance in how the National Assembly might design and set up such an institution for itself.

We just had some technical experts from our STAR program, USAID STAR program, and we also in this group of technical experts had someone from CRS also come over here to sit down and work with the National Assembly to actually define what a concrete project would look like. The next step is to sort of finalize the project design, get the necessary people lined up and move forward with the project.

The infrastructure suggestion is a little bit more complicated so it may take me a little longer to explain. But the central idea would be to set up a fund and that fund would hire, initially hire consultants who would evaluate the feasibility of projects. These consultants would be sort of a third party consultant whose reputation is internationally recognized by bankers and everybody else. Once those consultants give the okay for the project, then the fund would work to finance the project.

These consultants would not only do the feasibility study, but they would then set up and monitor the bidding process to make sure that it is totally transparent and according to international standards.

These consultants would also help to build capacity in Vietnam so that eventually Vietnam would take over doing the feasibility studies and the bidding process. The fund that I’m talking about would actually be set up using a combination of certain bank guarantees, ODA financing, and private sector financing. We believe that it would be able to offer some lower cost financing to, the cost of financing would be lower than just going to a bank for a loan.
If you're interested in more, I don’t really want to get into a whole lot of detail, because there are a lot of little details about this thing, but Richard Neiburg, right there, who is with USAID will be able to get you a paper. That paper will probably explain it much better than my poor explanation. [Laughter].

Question: I’m Ben Stocking from the Associated Press.

You raised the subject of human rights in your opening remarks. You highlighted the fact that over the last year the U.S. has repeatedly expressed concerns about human rights in Vietnam. Yet in the last three months Vietnam has blocked Facebook, sent 15 democracy activists and bloggers to jail, they’re planning to put another one on trial Friday. Do you think that behind the scenes diplomacy and words with respect to human rights are having the desired effect here? And have you considered taking some kind of definitive action to respond to human rights violations here such as, perhaps, curtailing aid of some sort of halting negotiations of some sort as some congress people and human rights organizations have suggested?

Ambassador Michalak: We have human rights dialogues with a number of countries all around the world in which there are what we believe are varying degrees of human rights issues that we need to deal with. At this point I think we want to continue those dialogues to see if we can’t make some progress.

For example, at our last human rights dialogue we agreed on three different governance-related projects on which we will work together with the government of Vietnam. We think that for the present time this is the right course of action for us.

Question: It’s also related to human rights.

First, you mentioned education and then you said human rights was also your great priority.

Ambassador Michalak: That’s right.

Question: I hadn’t heard that before. Has this gone up in the rankings? And is there any reason for that?

Ambassador Michalak: I’ve always said that my three priorities are human rights, education, economics. Sometimes I may mix them up in different orders because they’re all at the same level of priority. Along with, let’s see, a whole bunch of others.

Question: In 15 years there’s been a lot of progress in the relationship with the United States, but the situation has been described, widely recognized, the worsening of human rights conditions. Does that have any influence on whether or not the President visits?

Ambassador Michalak: I’m glad you mentioned the 15 years, because if you look back 15 years ago, think of what the human rights situation was like in Vietnam at that time. Particularly things like the right to eat, the right to sell products, the right to have a roof over your head, and some of the truly basic human needs.

I think that over the years Vietnam has made some notable progress in poverty reduction, in economic development which benefits all of the people, and a number of different areas. Religious freedom is another one. I think we have seen a spike in issues of concern on human rights, and all I can tell you is that we’re working very hard on each and every one of these things with the government of Vietnam. Is this the beginning of a trend? We don’t know, but we certainly hope not. That’s one of the reasons why we continue to have the dialogue that we have.
Question: I’m from Investment Newspaper. I have two questions.

You mentioned that the U.S. was the biggest investor in Vietnam last year, so can you give an explanation why the U.S. became the biggest investor in the context of a global economic crisis? And do you think that in 2010 the U.S. will continue to be the biggest investor in Vietnam? And what will the prospect of the economic relationship between the two countries be like?

The second question, do you think that after 15 years and after the celebration of the 15th Anniversary of relations between the two countries, the two countries should raise the level of their relations and cooperation to a new height, to a new level?

Ambassador Michalak: Why were we the biggest? I have no idea. I really don’t. [Laughter]. I have been asked before, wouldn’t it be great if the U.S. was the number one investor in Vietnam. We don’t look to be number one or number two or whatever. We don’t use those rankings. What we try to do is, what American companies try to do is American companies look around the region and around the world for the place that has the best investment environment and the place where they can form good partnerships that are going to be profitable for everybody involved. I think that last year Vietnam was a very good destination for a number of American companies.

In 2010, I don’t know what will happen. It appears that the world is beginning to recover from the global downturn, so I expect a global recovery or increased economic activity around the world including in Vietnam.

I would expect that the level of foreign direct investment in Vietnam will go up during 2010 and investment from the United States could possibly go up as well. We continue to have a very high level of interest in American companies in looking at Vietnam as a possible destination for investment. For a number of reasons, many companies are still waiting to see a little bit more economic recovery worldwide before they make an investment decision.
So when you ask what projects will be coming up, I really can’t tell because it’s kind of up to the companies if they think that the global environment, and more particularly the investment environment here in Vietnam are right for them to start their investment.

In response to your second question, I think that we have over the past, well certainly in 2008, I think we have actually taken our relationship to a new level. That was the year when Prime Minister Dung visited Washington and you saw a number of new agreements in political security talks in policy planning talks, in education and in climate change. You saw the relationship become much more broad than it ever has become in the past.

I think this year is a good year for us to take stock, to try to understand okay, what were the good points about the past 15 years, what were the bad points, what can we do going forward for the next 15 years. So we’ll be looking at a number of different possibilities for going forward, and I think there are plenty of opportunities for continuing to expand the relationship.

Question: I’m from Banking Times.

You mentioned in your opening remarks 2010 is a year to celebrate 15 years of relationship, and you mentioned cooperation in the education area. So can you tell what will be, can you tell us something about economic cooperation in this year?

Ambassador Michalak: Economic cooperation. Sure.

I think two of the biggest things coming up this year are the continuation and hopefully the completion of our negotiations on a Bilateral Investment Treaty. That’s one thing.

The second thing is the beginning of our discussion with Vietnam and all of the other partners in the TransPacific Partnership, which is a Free Trade Agreement.

I think there are also a number of other opportunities to make significant progress in areas of interest to both the United States and the government of Vietnam. Particularly in the areas of health and in the areas of Vietnam’s desire to integrate into the global economic system.

I believe in April -- First of all, Vietnam is the Chair of ASEAN this year and there are going to be any number of things related to ASEAN that will affect Vietnam directly and I believe will help Vietnam to continue its economic development.
I think one of the most important activities going on within ASEAN is an activity called the ASEAN Single Window. This involves basically a very drastic simplification of customs procedures which will automate the entire process, making trade within ASEAN and with ASEAN’s trading partners much more rapid, and would drastically improve Vietnam and ASEAN’s competitiveness.

In this process Vietnam’s part of this process is to develop what they call a national single window. The United States is working very hard to help Vietnam realize its plans and I am very excited at the amount of energy, dedication and motivation that we’re seeing from both sides in this project and I’m very hopeful that well be able to have some very significant results this year.

In the area of health, I guess I first should say that the chairmanship of ASEAN for Vietnam will give ASEAN a chance to show its ability to be a leader in the Southeast Asian region.

There is another opportunity which will happen in April, and that is an international conference involving somewhere between 70 and 100 countries who will come to Vietnam to discuss pandemic influenza. And if you want to know the real title, the title of that conference is called the IMCAPI. This will be the Inter-Ministerial Conference on Avian and Pandemic Influenza. I hope my staff realizes that I did remember that damn thing, because I could never remember it before. [Laughter].

So there are at least two of them, and I’m sure that there’s going to be plenty more.

Question: I’m from Thanh Nien News Newspaper.

My first question is concerning human rights in Vietnam. After the trial of Le Cong Dinh, the U.S. embassy here issued a statement. So, does this case, and other cases concerning democracy activists and human rights situation in Vietnam, affect the relations, the bilateral relations? Do you think those cases will create hindrances to the relations between the two countries?

My second question, recently the U.S. sold some weapons to Taiwan which were worth more than $6 billion. And China reacted very strongly to the sale. The general public had the comment that the sale will cause the situation in the East Sea or South China Sea to be more tense. So what is your comment on this?

Ambassador Michalak: Let me take the second one first.

I don’t see how a U.S.-China discussion is going to have any effect on what happens in the East Sea. Why would that affect anything in the East Sea? Maybe I’m missing something.

Question: Because Taiwan is one of the countries that is involved in the dispute in the East Sea. So with the new arms sales, with new equipment and weapons, it can lead to an arms race that concerns countries related to the South China Sea issues.

Ambassador Michalak: I would just say I don’t believe that is the case. I don’t believe that it would lead to an arms race in the East Sea. The defensive weapons that we, the defensive armaments that we sold to Taiwan are underneath the overall setting of the Taiwan Relations Act which requires us to help Taiwan maintain its defensive capability, not offensive capability. And to start an arms race, that usually refers to more of an offensive capability.
In terms of the first question, how do these things affect the bilateral relationship. Yes, it does affect the bilateral relationship. We have a very broad and deep relationship with Vietnam and when you have issues in any one of those areas, it does tend to have an effect on others. Depending on the issue, and here I don’t want to single out human rights, but just depending on whatever issue comes up, it has an effect on the way the U.S., the way the people of the United States look at Vietnam, the way the Congress looks at Vietnam, the way the administration looks at Vietnam. For instance, the way that Congress looks at Vietnam is very important in terms of the levels of development assistance that we receive from Congress. It’s very important in terms of, for instance, if the Vietnamese military wants to buy armaments from the United States, we’d need congressional approval for that. If the President or if any high level official is coming to visit we look at the totality of the relationship so it could have an effect on that. It’s one of those factors that is involved in our overall evaluation of any program that we do with Vietnam, or for any other country.
The human rights situation, economic situation, political situation, all of these factors are important in going forward with the relationship.

Question: Martha Overland from the Chronicle of Higher Education.

You mentioned the progress of establishing American style universities in Vietnam. Some of the [inaudible] have significant U.S. presence [inaudible] the university here. [Inaudible] they were serving on the new boards. Part of this is the [inaudible] accreditation.

How much of a setback is it with [inaudible]’s decision not to allow Americans or non-Vietnamese to serve on these university boards?

Ambassador Michalak: It’s hard to say. It definitely, I don’t know how to put it. It didn’t cause a halt, but it has slowed down at least one of the universities which is caught by the problem. When I talked with those folks at the university at the Education Conference, they were saying that they thought there would be a work-around that could make everything go smoothly again, but they’d have to look into it.

I think it’s definitely caused a complication. That’s a better word for it. It’s caused a complication and right now various universities and prospective universities are trying to figure out exactly how much of a complication it’s going to be.
Question: Ian Timberlake, AFP.

How can Vietnam be a responsible and credible chair of ASEAN, a group which professes to promote and protect human rights given the concerns that you mentioned earlier?

Secondly, do you have any concerns about this draft regulation about price controls?

Ambassador Michalak: We view this as a good year for Vietnam to demonstrate its leadership in ASEAN, including all parts in ASEAN and the Human Rights Council is one part of ASEAN. The Vietnamese have told us that as chair it’s up to them to go ahead and work with the Human Rights Council and carry out the mandate of the Council. So we’ll wait and see. We’ll see how it goes.

In terms of price controls, yes, we are concerned about that along with the Chambers of Commerce -- the Vietnam Chamber of Commerce and Industry, the U.S. Chamber of Commerce, the Australian Chamber of Commerce, European Chamber of Commerce and just about every other business organization that exists here in Vietnam.
We have, I can’t remember the exact date, we had two or three months in which to file comments on the decree. That period is still open. I want to say it’s open until February 22, but don’t quote me on that because I’m not sure if it’s February or March. But all of the actors involved are discussing it with the relevant Vietnamese authorities and I hope that we’ll be able to come to a satisfactory conclusion.

Question: The U.S. has [inaudible] Vietnam in [inaudible], so how about [inaudible]? [Inaudible] some plans that call for [inaudible] service? And [inaudible].

Ambassador Michalak: We intend to increase our work with the government of Vietnam in health. We’re working with the government right now on some modifications to our PEPFAR program. Do people know what PEPFAR is? Part of those modifications will be to work with Vietnam on what we call general health system strengthening.
President Obama has been talking about his own ideas for what he calls a Global Health Initiative which also addresses the issue of health systems, general health systems strengthening. We have been in very detailed discussions with the Ministry of Health on what kind of programs and what directions we might go in to again, to work on this general health systems strengthening.

So the plans are still in, we’re beginning to finalize these things. We’re also beginning to see how much, what kind of resources, how much money we’re going to be betting over the next year or two or three. And we’re trying to design this kind of a program. Maybe later on down the road we can have a separate press conference on health system strengthening once we have some more concrete plans to talk about.

Question: After the visit to the U.S. by Defense Minister Phung Quang Thanh, what promises on defense cooperation have the two sides made? And within the context of the celebration of 15 years of relationships, what is your assessment about defense relations between the two countries?

Ambassador Michalak: I’m glad you asked that question, Senator. [Laughter]. I think that over the very recent past, maybe even as recently as from six to eight months ago, we have seen some significant improvements in the military to military relationship between our two countries. We’ve seen a lot of increased interest in studying, making military to military exchanges, particularly in the areas of staff training and particularly in the area of English language training.
I think that we had a lot of programs that we were talking about, mainly in about three areas. These areas would be education, again mainly English language training; search and rescue operations; along with general disaster assistance discussions; and what we call humanitarian assistance -- There’s DR in there and I can’t remember what the DR stands for. But humanitarian assistance.

Voice: Humanitarian and Disaster Relief.

Ambassador Michalak: That’s it. Thank you. So it’s English language -- Oh, medical, and then HADR.
So we’ve agreed to make progress in all three of these areas, most related to the visit of Defense Minister Thanh. So we’re looking for ways to increase the number of military students going from Vietnam to the United States. Maybe I can double that in my time here. [Laughter].

In the medical part, we already have had a number of delegations from Vietnam Ministry of Defense going to the United States to look at various aspects of military medicine, and one of the biggest visible signs of this is the visit of our Hospital Ship Mercy, we hope it’s going to come this year; and also the Air Force equivalent of Mercy, which is called Pacific Angel, which is a huge airplane which is a flying hospital.

We’re also looking in the disaster relief area, we’re looking for ways to just discuss about how our respective militaries get involved in disaster assistance, as well as more concretely to look at how we can do some training in search and rescue activities.

We also have ship visits where American ships come into port. I think our most recent one was the ship whose captain happened to be an American of Vietnamese descent. He was a very popular guy when he came to the port. We’re very anxious to work with the government of Vietnam to try and figure out what would be a really appropriate ship visit to commemorate our 15 year anniversary. That’s some of the bilateral cooperation we talked about. And it was just a very excellent opportunity for our own Secretary of Defense to get to know the Vietnamese Minister of Defense on a more personal level.

Question: I want to ask you to make some comments about the cooperation between certain localities in the U.S. and localities in Vietnam. How does that cooperation help boost the relationship between the two countries in general?
Ambassador Michalak: That’s a very good question. There are a number of American cities who have established “sister city” relationships with cities here in Vietnam. I think San Francisco, Seattle, Pittsburgh, and a couple of other cities have all established relationships with cities here in Vietnam. I think this is an excellent way for people in the United States who don’t happen to live in New York or Washington, D.C. or Los Angeles, to get to know more about Vietnam and about its people and about the U.S.-Vietnam relationship.

Of course it depends on the city, but the “sister city” relationship can involve cultural exchange, business opportunities, and a number of ways to deepen cooperation between the two localities.

Additionally, every major city and a large number of minor cities have a significant Vietnamese-American population. Many times those Vietnamese-Americans have some rather different ideas about Vietnam, but they all want to maintain contact with Vietnam and they all want to see Vietnam succeed. I certainly try to visit as many of these communities as I can when I go back to the United States, and I have been encouraging my counterparts in the United States, Ambassador Phung, to do the same and he is also reaching out to the Vietnamese-American community there.

So I think it’s an important part of the relationship, and I think it’s one that we should all try to pay a little bit more attention to.

Thank you all very much. Again, I apologize for being late.