Ambassador Michael W. Michalak

Press Conference

August 26, 2009

Ambassador Michalak: Hi, everybody. It’s nice to see you all here. It is a really hot day out there, so I appreciate everybody’s coming.

Let me go through some of the written statement. It’s kind of long and I’m not going to go through the whole thing.

As you know, I’ve now been here for two years, and it’s been a great two years. I am very very happy and proud to be the American Ambassador here in Vietnam, in such a great country that has made so much progress and has so much potential. The bilateral relationship, I believe, is continuing to grow across the board based on friendship, mutual respect, cooperation on a wide range of issues that are in the long term interests of both countries, and continuing America’s support for Vietnam’s national sovereignty, security, and territorial integrity.

I think most importantly, we believe that we have certain common interests in a stable, secure and peaceful Asia Pacific region. The Obama administration has demonstrated its strong interest in focusing increased attention on boosting U.S. relations with Southeast Asia. As a sign of our deepening relationship, the U.S. and Vietnam continue to have high level diplomatic exchanges and we look forward to more of those over the coming year. For example, the most recent visit of Senator Webb I thought was a great success.

But increasingly I think our relationship is being based also on regular diplomatic exchanges and policy dialogues. For example, we’re beginning to coordinate more closely on security issues as highlighted by the second U.S.-Vietnam Political, Security and Defense Dialogue which was held in June. We’ll hold our second round of policy planning talks next week in Washington, and we expect to have the next round of our human rights dialogue later on this year.

As part of our discussions we have applauded Vietnam’s efforts to take a more active leadership position in regional and global affairs. For instance, at the UN Security Council and in ASEAN which Vietnam will chair in 2010.

I have a number of other things in the statement on cooperation on HIV/AIDS, on climate change, on general health issues, et cetera, et cetera, but if you want to know more about specific things we can talk about them a little bit more in the Q&A.

I think what I want to focus on now is the original three priorities that I mentioned when I first came to Vietnam, and those are economics, education, and human rights.

On economics, one of my primary goals has been to deepen our economic bilateral relationship, and I think we’ve done that. We’ve held regular productive talks on market opening, intellectual property rights, labor, agriculture, and many other issues under our Trade and Investment Framework Agreement. We hope to schedule soon a third round of our talks on a bilateral investment treaty and we continue to provide critical technical assistance to support Vietnam’s further integration into the world economy, for instance with the National Single Window Project that Vietnam is now working.

Now I want to turn to education, because that’s been one of my favorite issues. I believe we have been cooperating extremely well over the past year in the area of education by creating the Education Task Force during the visit of Prime Minister Dung to Washington in 2008. And the task force, my understanding is that we will soon release the final report and its recommendations on steps that both governments and educational institutions can take to continue to broaden cooperation. There are now about 9,000 Vietnamese students studying in the United States, or about two and a half times as many as three years ago. This number means not only that there are a lot of great young Vietnamese getting good educations in the United States, but it also indicates a long term strengthening of the bilateral relations between our two countries.

As part of our discussions with the government of Vietnam we’ve noted the importance of democracy and good governance, and we’ve urged the government of Vietnam to be more responsive to the rights of its citizens. We strongly believe it’s in Vietnam’s own best interest to ensure that its people have the full benefits of these rights. The Vietnamese people are talented and love their country, and by allowing them greater freedoms and a greater say in public affairs, we believe Vietnam will be significantly strengthened. We applaud the progress that Vietnam has made in some areas, such as improving the ability of religious people to practice their faith. We hope for continued progress in that area.

We remain concerned, however, for other of Vietnam’s human rights practices. For example, we remain concerned about efforts to crack down on media organization and criminalize free speech which will make it more difficult to tackle corruption and environmental degradation. We along with others have expressed concern with the recent arrests of dissidents including prominent attorney Le Cong Dinh and several other individuals supposedly affiliated with opposition groups.

We also continue to express concern over the imprisonment of others such as Father Nguyen Van Ly, Le Thi Cong Nhan and Nguyen Van Dai. And most recently we were disappointed by the VTV broadcast that cited confessions by several Vietnamese citizens for activities that in many places in the world are regarded as normal, usual discussions aimed at strengthening the rule of law in Vietnam, which is a goal that has the support of the highest levels of the Vietnamese government. We were also disturbed by what looked to us as a negative portrayal of U.S. assistance to Vietnam.

So you’ll get the full statements later on, but why don’t I stop there, and I want to take all your questions.

Question: I am from VietnamNet. I would like to ask you about the recent announcements by the Vietnamese government that they will open a consulate general in Houston. Would you please let us know more details about the discussion between the two countries about opening consulates in the two countries. Is it true that the U.S. is going to open a consulate in Da Nang, and also expand the consular district of the consulate general in Ho Chi Minh City to cover 21 provinces in the south.

Ambassador Michalak: Boy, you’re pretty well informed on what I thought were some private discussions with the government of Vietnam. [Laughter].

It is true that we have given the government of Vietnam permission to open up a consulate in Houston, and they have given us permission to open up a consultant in Da Nang. We recently gave visas to the advance team from Vietnam to go and find a place and to try to complete all of the formalities necessary to open up their consulate in Houston.

For our part, we’re trying to get an additional position approved through the government of Vietnam that will allow us to have an officer here who would be responsible for Da Nang. But due to our budgetary restrictions we have no idea when we’re actually going to be able to open the consulate in Da Nang. So we’ll try to cover it out of Ho Chi Minh City or out of Hanoi for the time being until we get enough money from our own government to actually set up a consulate there.

As to expansion of the consular district, this is an issue that we have been talking with the government of Vietnam on, and we will continue to have those discussions.

Question: What concerns do you have about the government’s Decision 97 on the scientific and technical organizations?

Ambassador Michalak: I just heard about that this morning, and I haven’t read it so I’m going to have to hold off on detailed comments. But even without reading it my concern would be to try to check the regulation and try to make sure that it allows for the free practice of scientists to do the kind of international research that Vietnam needs to do in order to continue to improve its educational system, and to become a first-rate science and technology power.

So like I say, I haven’t read it so I don’t know whether we need to be concerned or not, but I would hope that any directive on science and technology would try to guarantee that Vietnam has the flexibility to be able to continue to research and continue to become a strong power in science and technology.

Question: I have a question, recently Senator Jim Webb visited Vietnam, and he raised his concerns about the dispute in the South Sea Sea between Vietnam and China and others. My question is what do you think that the United States can do to tackle the issues of the South China Sea, to make those in balance?

Ambassador Michalak: Our own position is that we do not take a position on the actual disputes in the East Sea at this point, and that we urge all of the parties to the dispute to come together and to resolve these things peacefully. I think that Senator Webb presented some very interesting ideas on what he thinks the role of the United States should be. But as you know, he’s in the legislative branch which is completely independent from the executive branch, which is where I come from. But we’ve reported back on Senator Webb’s views, and I’m sure that he is going to make his views known when he has his own discussions with Secretary Clinton and others in the Obama administration. I would expect that we’ll have a good discussion on it and then decide what to do after that.

Question: I have two questions. Is it possible in terms of [inaudible] between United States and Vietnam. So now you mentioned Obama is [inaudible] Southeast Asia and [inaudible] Southeast Asia. So [inaudible] with Vietnam?

And the next one is on [inaudible] issue. I think on the negotiation with establishment of Free Trade Agreement between United States and Vietnam. So [inaudible] situation of this negotiation?

Ambassador Michalak: Let me take the second question first, because that’s the easiest one to answer.

We have been talking with the government of Vietnam and many other partners within the Asia Pacific region about what we call the Trans Pacific Partnership. Right now Vietnam has expressed an interest in participating along with Brunei, Singapore, New Zealand and Chile. Also Australia. I can’t forget Australia. They’ll kill me if I forget to name them.

There was recently a meeting of Trade Ministers from APEC in Singapore, I think it was last month. At that meeting the U.S. Trade Representative Ron Kirk told everybody that we cannot say yes or no to the TPP yet because the administration is still conducting a review of its own trade policies. But even though we are conducting our review, all of the participants at the meeting felt they had a good sort of a positive forward-looking discussion, so I’m anxious to see the results of the administration’s review.

I think in terms of your first question, some of the concrete actions that the U.S. has taken to increase relations or increase the visibility of our relations with Southeast Asia, some of those actions have already happened.

I think that Secretary Clinton on her first foreign trip after becoming Secretary of State came to Asia, and during that trip she visited the ASEAN Secretariat in Jakarta. This alone was a very strong signal and I believe that’s the way it was looked at not only in Vietnam, but among all of the countries in the region. She followed that up with her attendance at the ASEAN Regional Forum recently in Phuket where she announced that the United States would sign and did sign the Treaty of Amity and Cooperation among the Southeast Asian nations.

She also chaired the very first meeting ever of the Mekong Foreign Ministers -- the United States and Thailand, Laos, Cambodia, Vietnam -- came together to discuss common problems and how the United States might be able to help with the solution of some of these issues. We came up with some tools that we think can assist. For instance the Forecast Mekong which is a forecasting tool for looking at the effect of floods and typhoons on the Mekong Delta and the countries of the Mekong.

We talked about setting up a partnership between the Mekong River Commission and the Mississippi River Commission because those two deltas are very close and experience many of the same problems in terms of flooding and disaster relief and those kinds of issues.

So those are some of the things that we did. We talked about some other areas of cooperation and I think we will continue to talk about other ways that we can cooperate.

Question: My question is, across the executive/legislative line and it also has to do with human rights. I’m interested in your take on the Vietnam Human Rights Act of ’09 which is in Congress. If I understand it correctly, it has been, it was brought up because getting that sense from 2006 to now when Vietnam was taken off of this country’s particular concern list, there’s been some backsliding in terms of human rights. So A, do you think that there’s some basis to that? B, will it send the right kind of message to the government of Vietnam? And C, what effect do you think it will have on relations?

Ambassador Michalak: A couple of things. First of all, on the Act itself I think that the administration is still putting together its position on the Human Rights Act. So specifically on the bill, I have not seen it and I know it has not yet come up for action in the Senate. So we’ll wait and see about developments there.

In terms of basis, I think that the first thing you’ve got to do is to realize that countries of particular concern is a category that exists in the Religious Freedom Act. If you look in the Religious Freedom Act you will see there is a list of criteria which must be fulfilled in order to have a country on that list. It is true that Vietnam used to be on that list, that they made enough improvements in religious freedom that we thought we should be able to take them off the list and we have, and our position remains that they have not done anything that merits putting them back on the list of countries of particular concern.

While I believe that it is particularly, it is completely appropriate for us to discuss human rights with the government and to tell the government when we are disturbed or concerned about human rights practices, I also believe that it’s important when they do make progress to recognize that progress and to give credit where credit is due.

I believe in my discussions with people all over Vietnam -- religious leaders, many walks of life, they all believe that there has been very good progress on religious freedom here in Vietnam. It’s not perfect and there are still issues that we continue to discuss with the government, but the issues that we’re discussing are not large enough to cause us to say that Vietnam should be put back on the list of countries of particular concern.

Having said that, as I said in my opening statement, we are concerned over many of the recent arrests, the criminalization of what we view as being free speech, or at least discussing items which in most countries of the world would not be considered a crime. We do have concerns about that and we do regularly raise it with the government of Vietnam. Through our human rights dialogues and other formal and informal discussions with the government, we hope we can make some progress on these issues.

Question: I would like to follow up the question from the Japanese reporter on relations between the U.S. and ASEAN.

In the upcoming trip by President Obama to Asia he will visit four countries. The U.S. has always said that Vietnam is one of the top partners of the U.S. in the region, so why does Mr. Obama not choose Vietnam to visit?

Ambassador Michalak: I don’t know. I think you might have to ask President Obama that question.

I certainly told him he ought to come to Vietnam. But having worked on presidential visits before, there are just so many different factors you have to consider. We didn’t make it this time, but we’re working on next year.

Question: You said when you began working here cooperation in education was one of your top priority. I already see an increase of Vietnamese students going to the U.S. to study. Are you still trying to increase the number of Vietnamese students to the U.S. or increasing American [inaudible] while you are in office here in the remaining time?

Ambassador Michalak: Well, I did say before I even came to Vietnam that I wanted to double the number of students going from Vietnam to the U.S. and we’ve done that. So we’re going to continue to work on increasing the number of students going from Vietnam to the U.S., but I’m not sure I can promise to double it yet again. [Laughter].

We are trying to work on more American universities coming to Vietnam. I’ve had two education conferences already and we will have another one next year to try to increase those ties. I’m hearing a lot of very interesting information about private universities that are intending to open up here in Vietnam that will use basically an American style education system, and we’re trying to work with those universities to help them out any way we can. And we continue to work with the government of Vietnam, because the government wanted our assistance in its own plans to set up an American style university. We think there are some useful suggestions in the report of the Vietnam-U.S. Education Task Force, and hopefully that’s going to come out very very soon. We’re just waiting for one more signature.

We’ve had some expansion in our Fulbright program, and we look forward to trying as hard as we can to continue to expand our cooperative programs with the government in education.

Question: I don’t know if economic trade relations is a favorite issue that you want to talk about, but I would like to ask you one question. Vietnam has attracted a lot of investment capital from U.S. investors and enterprises. In the first four months of this year the U.S. was the number one investor. So in your opinion, why has Vietnam attracted a lot of investment from the U.S. investors? And would you please share with us what you think about the perspective of investment from the U.S. in the future?

Ambassador Michalak: First of all, you’re right. For the first four, maybe even six months of this year we were the number one investor in Vietnam. In fact we may still be the number one investor in Vietnam. But I’m not sure if that’s because the U.S. is investing so much more or that’s because others are investing a little bit less.

The global economic downturn has had a very negative effect on many countries in the region, and foreign direct investment is down pretty much all over the world. But I can say I believe that the interest on the part of American companies in Vietnam remains very very high.

I just had four or five IT companies at my house last night for a reception, and they told me about many of their plans, and there are some very interesting plans for Vietnam for the future. And over the weekend I was down in Da Nang at a meeting of the APEC Business Advisory Council, and I heard from not only the American representatives but representatives from all over the APEC region, that they are very interested in what they see here in Vietnam.

Vietnam has undertaken a large number of economic reforms which I think have absolutely been very attractive to foreign investors. The secret going forward is going to be whether or not Vietnam continues the same pace of reform that it has up to now. For instance, just recently I think the Prime Minister was quoted in the newspapers as saying he wanted to get rid of like 30 percent of the economic regulations in Vietnam. This is part of this Project 30 that the Air Force is working on right now. And I think that’s a fantastic project. I fully applaud the Prime Minister for doing it, and it’s going to be reforms like that and support from the highest levels of government like that that is going to continue to make Vietnam competitive and make Vietnam attractive to foreign investors.

So I love talking about economics. Sure. Any time. [Laughter].

Question: I am from Vietnam-U.S. magazine, please elaborate on the Mississippi-Mekong Partnership. And you said about budget constraints that do not allow you to open a consulate in Da Nang. How about building a new embassy in Hanoi [Laughter].

Ambassador Michalak: I’m glad you asked that question, Senator.

I’m not sure, well, budget is one of the issues in discussing the new embassy, but there are some other issues and I’d say it’s on both sides. It’s on both the U.S. side and the Vietnamese side that make it very difficult for us to go forward with a new embassy at this time. And no, I’m not going to give any more details on what those issues are.

On the Mekong Partnership, we have noticed that there is a great deal of cooperation among non-Mekong countries and Mekong countries to try to improve the development of the Mekong. I know that Japan in particular is doing a lot of work down there, and we’ve seen some other countries doing some work down there, and we believe that the Mekong is such a vital part of Vietnam’s future that it would be important for us in order to help the continuation of development in Vietnam to also get involved in the Mekong.

This was the first Mekong Foreign Ministers meeting, and one of the things that the Foreign Ministers talked about was do you want to continue this? Do you have some ideas for how we might improve our cooperation in the future? My understanding is that all of the Foreign Ministers, including Foreign Minister [Fan Za Hyum] believe that this kind of a regional summit meeting was excellent and they definitely want to continue it next year which will be during Vietnam’s year. And dealing with issues like how do you make best use of the water resource, how do you make best use of the Mekong as an energy source, what is going to happen to the Mekong as global warming proceeds? All of these questions are questions of interest to those Mekong countries and we believe because, as I say, of the close relationship between the Mississippi Delta and the Mekong Delta, that there is a real opportunity for productive exchange of ideas and best practices.

Question: I’d like to go back to the question about economic cooperation between the U.S. and Vietnam. My question is, in which particular areas of the United States is interested to invest in Vietnam in long term as well as short term [inaudible]?

Ambassador Michalak: Wow. I think there are a lot of areas. Certainly we’ve already seen large investments in semiconductors. And it’s not just semiconductors. The plant that’s going in there is going to be the first fabrication plant, I think Intel’s first fabrication plant or biggest fabrication plant in Asia.

We’ve got a wind turbine plant going in in Haiphong. We’re helping to build ports down in the south of Vietnam. Boeing is interested in looking at possibly airplane parts coming from Vietnam. IT companies are looking at using some Vietnamese software in various IT functions around the world.

So I think what you’re seeing is a desire on the part of many investors to move up the technology curve and begin to take advantage of some of the energy and the youth of Vietnam.

So I think there’s a lot of opportunity here but there are also a lot of challenges. In order to get that kind of investment you have to have the talented workforce, so you have to continue to make the education reforms, continue to improve the infrastructure so people can ship goods around the country and around the region. There are a lot of challenges and it’s going to take a lot of hard work.

Question: You seem to be very interested in talking about economics, so I have one question for you. The U.S. economy seeing good signs of recovery, but do you think that the consumer behavior may no longer be the same as it was before the recession? What’s your opinion about it, and how does this affect the Vietnam’s exports to the U.S.? What do you think is the advantages and disadvantages of this recovery to the economy, and how to cope with that change? Thank you.

Ambassador Michalak: Usually people that can answer those kind of questions get paid a lot more money than I do. [Laughter]. I’ll answer your question but I hope it’s not worth exactly what you’re paying for it. [Laughter].

I do think that consumption patterns in the United States have made a shift. I think people for a number of years will be less certain about the future, and as a result they will be much more economical in their purchases. We have to see about, we hope that the recovery is going to include a recovery in the labor market, but it’s not at all clear how long that recovery in the labor market is going to take.

So generally what this means is that the consumer, instead of buying the high end, the most expensive in any range of products, is going to go down to a more middle range. I think this actually ought to benefit Vietnam, because a number of the target markets for the textile, footwear, furniture industries in Vietnam are sort of that middle range of retailers in the United States. We may even be seeing some of that already. I think Vietnam is one of the few countries that has not seen its textile exports to the U.S. drop considerably.

So I think it can be, like I say, I think it can be a plus for Vietnam going forward.

Question: I would like to ask you a question about the Agent Orange issue. What is your own opinion about the lawsuit pursued by some victims of Agent Orange against some American companies? I also would like you to talk about the cooperation between the U.S. and Vietnam in dealing with Dioxin and Agent Orange contamination in Vietnam.

Ambassador Michalak: I don’t really take a position on lawsuits. I’m not a lawyer. Most legal issues are much too complicated for me to understand. I know that the U.S. government for its part since 2001 has been working with the government of Vietnam on many different aspects of Agent Orange and Dioxin, both on the health side and on the research side and on the environment side.

We’ve set up a good cooperative relationship with Office 33, the Joint Advisory Council which has met two or three times now, and the next time it’s going to be meeting it’s going to be in another two weeks, I think, here in Hanoi.

We’ve already begun to do some remediation work. The government of Vietnam asked us to work on the hotspot in Da Nang. We’ve already begun that work and we’ve already sent some soil samples back for testing to see how well the remediation technology is working.

We’ve already started three health-related projects in the Da Nang area, and I think at the upcoming meeting of the Joint Advisory Council we will be reviewing the progress that we’ve made. And once again, the government of Vietnam has been with us every step of the way, helping us to make decisions on what projects would be most useful and how to move forward together. So I look forward to continuing that cooperation.

Question: I have another question about the rights issues you spoke of. You mentioned certain names of folks that have been arrested. I wanted, is it the embassy’s practice to, do you present a list to the government of people you would like to see released, maybe ahead of National Day or anything like that?

Ambassador Michalak: Yep.

Question: So who’s on this list, and when and how do you --

Ambassador Michalak: We send, when it’s announced that there will be an amnesty, we send a letter to the appropriate authorities with a list of names of people that we would like to see released. And we don’t give out that list.

Question: Have you seen positive signals about any of the people on your list yet?

Ambassador Michalak: Usually the only positive signals we see are after the amnesty has been announced. Then we start checking to see what the positive signals were. [Laughter].

Question: I would like you to give some comments on the perspective of the cooperation between Vietnam and the U.S. in the education field.

Ambassador Michalak: I think we’ve got great, there are great prospects for cooperation in the field of education between the U.S. and Vietnam. We continue to try to increase the number of students going from Vietnam to the U.S., to increase the cooperation between American and Vietnam colleges and institutions, and to do whatever we can to help go through some of the regulatory reforms that the government of Vietnam would like to see happen here in Vietnam.

So I look forward to seeing more Vietnamese professors taking some courses in the U.S.; American professors coming here; more students, maybe even various government officials going for short term training courses in the U.S. We’re looking at all of these different options. Whatever we can make work, we’ll do it.

Thank you all very much.