A newly built bridge in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam. Photograph: Hoang Dinh Nam/AFP/Getty
Phan Van Khai is set to be the first Vietnamese leader to visit the US since the Vietnam war ended 30 years ago. Mr Khai told reporters during a visit to Australia that he will travel to Washington at the end of next month, although it was not immediately clear whom he would meet.
"The purpose of my visit to the United States is to elevate our relationship to a higher plane," Mr Khai said during a joint news conference with the Australian prime minister, John Howard.
Such a visit would mark another step on the long road of reconciliation between these two former enemies who fought a war in which five million Vietnamese - four million of whom were civilian - and 58,000 Americans perished.
The wound has taken a long time to heal. Vietnam was keen to normalise relations with the US when the war ended, but after having endured the humiliation of defeat, Washington was in no hurry to embrace its former foe. Vietnam's claims of reparations also rubbed salt into the wounds.
Any hopes of an improvement in relations were dashed when Vietnam invaded Cambodia in 1978 in an early instance of regime change. Even though Vietnam did the Cambodians and the world a favour by overthrowing the genocidal Pol Pot, the US imposed an embargo against Vietnam.
In the 1980s, the issue of Americans missing in action (MIA) bedevilled relations. A vocal MIA lobby was determined to block any move towards normal relations as it insisted on a full accounting of some 2,500 missing servicemen.
But as Vietnam wound down its involvement in Cambodia and stepped up its cooperation in on the MIA issue, Washington's antagonism began to lift. In 1991, the US presented a road map for a lifting of the embargo and the establishment of normal relations.
Four years later, the US and Vietnam established formal diplomatic relations, when Bill Clinton was in the White House. In 2000, Clinton, in his last foreign trip, received a rapturous welcome when he became the first American president to visit Vietnam since the end of the war.
Some friction remains despite the improvement in relations. Last year, the US state department named Vietnam as one of the world's worst violators of religious freedom.
Mr Khai can nevertheless expect a cordial welcome from the White House. But he may not get such a warm reception from the Vietnamese, especially the older ones, who fled to the US after the war. Many view the communist regime in Hanoi with distaste.
