Remarks by Ambassador Michael W. Michalak

September 21, 2007

 

Media Roundtable, Hanoi, Vietnam

Ambassador Michalak: I’ve been here about a month and I’m still learning an awful lot. I’ve been very pleased with the welcome that I’ve received thus far, and I continue to look forward to a good three years here in which I hope to continue to broaden and deepen the relationship between the U.S. and Vietnam.

With that, why don’t we just open it up. What’s on your mind?

Question: My question is simple. What is your highest priority in your term?

Ambassador Michalak: My highest priority. That’s a simple question? [Laughter].

I have been telling everybody that there are many many priorities that I will have as Ambassador here. There are three priorities which I consider to be equally high and which I intend to pursue while I’m here.

The first is to continue to encourage the Government of Vietnam to make progress on human rights including religious freedom, freedom of the press, freedom of expression.

The next item is the economic relationship between the U.S. and Vietnam. I would like to work very hard to continue to improve our economic relationship and there are many ways in which I intend to do that. I want to build on the already excellent relationship we have had through the STAR project, through the VNCI, the Vietnam Competitiveness Initiative, and also the excellent relationship that the American Chamber of Commerce and individual American companies have with their counterparts on the Vietnam side.

I want to make sure that Vietnam and American companies take advantage of the WTO status of Vietnam and also continue to work on the Trade and Investment Facilitation Agreement which we recently signed with the Government of Vietnam. I’d also like to work very hard on trying to attract more American investment into Vietnam.

The final of the three major priorities that I have is education. I would like to work very hard to help the Government of Vietnam strengthen its own education infrastructure and I have made a commitment that I will work very hard to try to double the number of students that we send from Vietnam to American schools.

I believe that education is a value which is shared both by the United States and Vietnam, and it’s certainly an issue that is going to be more and more important as Vietnam continues to develop economically.

So it’s human rights, economics and trade including investment, and education. Those three are equally high priorities for me here in Vietnam.

Question: Next week the Prime Minister of Vietnam will attend the 62nd meeting of the United Nations General Assembly. And the main objective is to lobby for Vietnam to become a non-permanent member of the UN Security Council. So can you comment on the political integration process of Vietnam, and what does the U.S. expect of Vietnam’s role in the international political arena?

Ambassador Michalak: I think that we would welcome Vietnam’s election as a non-permanent member of the Security Council. I know that we do not take any kind of a position, or at least we don’t publicly announce who we’re going to vote for. It’s kind of like asking someone who they’re going to vote for in the presidential election. Nobody wants to say before the election actually takes place.

Vietnam has been developing its position on the international stage for many years now. I believe that within ASEAN we have seen Vietnam take a leadership role on many issues. And certainly my work within APEC has taught me that Vietnam can play a very strong leadership role in that organization.

Up to now Vietnam has had what is called an omni-directional foreign policy. In other words, it wants to be friends with everyone. This is a wonderful goal. In fact my goal is to be friends with everybody too. (Laughter.) But as a non-permanent member of the Security Council Vietnam will have to make choices and will have to cast votes. So they’re going to have to weigh many factors when they do cast a vote. We have cooperated in many ways with the Government of Vietnam and if they become a non-permanent member of the Security Council we will look forward to working with them and talking with them about issues of importance to the United States.

I think that our expectation is that Vietnam will play a constructive role in the Security Council and will work hard for peace, security and prosperity, in much the same way as we try to do in that body. We have certainly offered to be as helpful as possible to the Government of Vietnam should they become a non-permanent member.

Question: As you know the U.S. investment in Vietnam is several billion U.S. dollars, but the disbursed capital is more like $2 billion. So what is your priority to push up the investment in Vietnam?

Ambassador Michalak: Some people actually say that the United States is the number one investor in Vietnam because there is a lot of American money which does not come from America but comes from say the Cayman Islands or other places when it’s really American money.

As I told somebody once before, American companies will not invest in Vietnam just to make the U.S. the biggest investor in Vietnam. American companies will invest in Vietnam to make money.

What most companies look for when they’re trying to determine which country to invest in is a good investment climate. What this means is a solid foundation for rule of law which means that the court system functions well and functions impartially and functions quickly. American companies look for a regulatory system that is open and transparent and that allows the companies affected by rules and regulations to make comments as these rules and regulations are being developed.

I think most of all what the business community likes to see is they like to see a certain stability in the policy regime. In other words they don’t want to see a regulation put into place one day and then the opposite regulation put into place the next day.

I think that Vietnam has made a certain amount of progress in developing the kind of investment climate that will attract investment. In fact, as you know, Vietnam is attracting a good deal of investment even today. We believe that Vietnam can do even better, and under our TIFA, the Trade and Investment Facilitation Agreement, we are talking about a number of these kinds of transparency and rule of law and governance issues.

We’ve also begun exploring with our partners in the Government of Vietnam the possibility of negotiating a BIT, which is a Bilateral Investment Treaty. The STAR program and the VNCI program are also working on ways to improve the investment climate to streamline regulations and to basically make Vietnam more competitive in the international competition for foreign investment.

So I will be working to try to continue to encourage the Government of Vietnam to improve the investment climate, and I will be working to introduce American companies to Vietnam so that they can judge for themselves that Vietnam is a good place to invest.

Question: With regard to trade, the U.S. is considered Vietnam’s biggest export market. So what should Vietnam care about to increase the trade volume?

Ambassador Michalak: Increase the trade volume? Right now I think Vietnam sells over $9 billion worth of goods and services to the United States and the United States sells about $1.5 billion to Vietnam. I think that maybe Vietnam ought to buy more from the United States so that we can have a better balance. [Laughter].

Americans will buy products that have good quality, good price, and are delivered reliably and on time. If Vietnam can deliver those products I’m sure there will be markets in America.

But at the same time I should say that America also produces many products that are very high quality, a good price, and can be delivered very quickly. Particularly some high technology products which Vietnam can use to develop its own industries. So I urge the companies in Vietnam and the government in Vietnam to take a good look at American products because they’re well worth buying.

Question: You mentioned education as one of the priorities of your policy, your term in Vietnam and you mentioned infrastructure of the education system. I’m wondering if your effort or your idea extends to encouraging Vietnam to have more opportunities for private education, secondary level, at the college and university level to improve the quality.

Ambassador Michalak: I don’t think we’ve gotten down to really the specifics or anything that’s that detailed, but that certainly is something we would be willing to look into.

I guess when I think about education I think about our Fulbright Program, I think about the Fulbright Economic Training Program down in Ho Chi Minh City, I think of the Vietnam Education Foundation, and then I think about all of the American firms that are coming into Vietnam and in one way or another are contributing to the education of Vietnamese.

What I’d like to do, and what we are working on doing, is to pull together all of these sort of stakeholders in the educational field and have a meeting and see if there are some synergies, see if there are some ways we can work together and cooperate to make our resources go a little bit further and do even more, become more efficient in the way that we use our resources. It may be that private education or secondary education or whatever may be some of the ideas that come out of this conference.

The other thing that I think about when I think about education is there is a lot of misinformation in the community about getting a student visa to go to the United States. I want to set up a program where representatives from our consular offices, both here in Hanoi and also down in Ho Chi Minh City, go out and go to schools and go to various colleges and other places of education and explain what are the terms and conditions for getting a student visa to the United States.

I think there are a lot of companies out there who promise, you pay me so many hundreds or thousands of dollars and I’m going to give you a student visa. That’s not the way it works. So as we advocate for more transparency I want to make sure that we are being totally transparent in what the conditions are for getting a student visa.

I’ll have to check the figures, but I believe that our student visa, the number of student visas that we have issued is up well over 50 percent from the number of student visas that we issued last year. Something like 60 or 70 percent of the people who apply for student visas get them. So those are some of the things that I think about.

Question: What will be your first priority about human rights, you’re going to press for human rights and press freedom? How far is Vietnam right now from press freedom and in human rights? And one thing about in my area, I think the U.S. people is very concerned about the slow progress of MIA. How are you going to focus that problem? Thank you.

Ambassador Michalak: Let me take the first part of that question first.

When I have been making my introductory calls on the President and on the Prime Minister and on the Foreign Minister and on many other high level representatives of the Vietnamese government, they often were the ones to raise human rights with me before I raised it with them. They understand that we have some differences in that area and every one of them said we do need to sit down and talk about these differences and see if we can narrow those differences. So I look forward to continuing my discussion with them on human rights to see how we can narrow our differences.

You just saw the State Department issued its Annual Report on International Religious Freedom and I believe that report shows that Vietnam has made some progress, particularly in that area. We are also working on things like transparency and rule of law and governance, these other things that I mentioned earlier. So I think that there is a window of opportunity here to continue our dialogue and see if we can deepen our mutual understanding on these issues and see if we can make some progress.

I think on press, the freedom of the press, I think you all know much better than I do what the situation is there. Certainly it would seem to me that in order to tell the world the story of Vietnam, in order to get out the good side of some stories that so far are coming out only on the bad side, that a freer press would be a good idea.

I understand that for instance international news agencies are not allowed to open offices, reporting offices in Ho Chi Minh City. That doesn’t seem to be a good idea to me at all. I think more than half of the exciting economic story of Vietnam is in Ho Chi Minh City. If international agencies could open offices there I think they’d be much better prepared to report on that good story.

On MIA efforts, that is something which remains a continuing effort on the part of the United States and the Government of Vietnam. In fact today in the United States is the Remembrance Day for POW/MIA. It’s a day when we rededicate ourselves to the fullest possible accounting for all American service members lost in various conflicts over the years.

I think that overall we are very pleased with the cooperation we have received from the Government of Vietnam in this effort, and I think the Government of Vietnam is pleased with information that we’ve been able to give to them in their efforts to fully account for their own MIA.

But as in any system there’s always room for improvement and we’re continuously talking with the Government of Vietnam and suggesting ways to improve the functioning of our search for MIAs.

The MIA effort was one issue that the U.S. and Vietnam agreed upon and was central to the beginning of the renormalization process with Vietnam and I think that it continues even today. I know it does.

Question: You mentioned the human rights support from the State Department and the fact that it noted improvements on religious freedom in Vietnam. Then just a few days later the U.S. Congress passed the resolution essentially chastising Vietnam for its human rights reform. So how do you reconcile these two seemingly contradictory events? How do you explain them to the Vietnamese if they wonder what the heck’s going on back there?

Ambassador Michalak: That’s an easy one. The United States has three branches of government. We have an executive branch, a legislative branch, and a judicial branch. Each branch of government has its own procedures for making decisions and coming up with policies. The human rights report is written by the executive branch of government, namely the State Department, and represents the views of the President and of that branch of Government. The legislative branch is allowed to say and do and pass the laws that it considers to be the way in which the country ought to go.

So as I mentioned, human rights is a major priority for me and it’s a priority upon which we will continue to work with the Government of Vietnam. But at the same time we respect the legislative process within our government and we will wait and see what happens in that process. My understanding is that particular bill has now passed the House and will go to the Senate, and we’ll see what happens in the Senate.

So I don’t know if that makes the picture any clearer, but that’s the way our system works.

Question: Can you elaborate more about the announcement that the U.S. will withdraw its troops from Iraq?

Ambassador Michalak: I’m not familiar with all of the details of that but I think right now there is a debate going on within the United States on whether to withdraw, how many to withdraw, and at what time.

As you know General Patreaus, the commander in charge of this operation, came back recently and presented his assessment of the situation. I believe that the President has said that there is a possibility that we may withdraw some troops sometime next year, but this of course will depend on the situation on the ground at that time.

Question: Can you please comment on the Human Rights Act for Vietnam of 2007?

Ambassador Michalak: The Human Rights Act is now working its way through the Congress and it’s not yet been passed. I really can’t say anything about it because that’s part of our legislative process and the Congress, the House of Representatives and the Senate have to work on it and we’ll have to wait and see what they come up with.

Question: Among the three high priorities that you cite, what is the most difficult one? And by the end of your term do you think the U.S. will become the number one investor? And do you think by that time the report on Vietnam’s human rights and religious freedom will be much better?

Ambassador Michalak: I make it a practice never to tell the future. [Laughter]. I certainly hope that the human rights report will be a lot better because of the actions of the Government of Vietnam. I certainly hope that Vietnam attracts billions and billions of dollars of U.S. investment. But I don’t particularly care if the U.S. is the number one investor or not. All I want to do is make sure that the conditions are the best that they can be within Vietnam to attract foreign direct investment.

Question: You said that Vietnam would have to make choices and cast votes at the Security Council. What do you expect exactly from Vietnam on these issues like human rights in Myanmar or Iran’s nuclear issue?

Ambassador Michalak: I think that the American positions on those issues - human rights in Burma and Iran and other questions - are fairly well known. If Vietnam becomes a non-permanent member of the Security Council then we will seek to persuade Vietnam to vote with us in the Security Council on those issues. Whether they do it or not of course is going to be up to Vietnam.

So we would hope that Vietnam would play a constructive role and participate actively in the debate on all of these issues.

Question: Ambassador, through the first half of this year several Vietnamese citizens were put on trial, convicted and jailed for criminal offenses under Vietnamese law essentially for criticizing the ruling Communist Party. My question is whether the U.S. and your ambassadorship will continue to discuss with the Vietnamese government ways of changing the law so that such activities of expression are not illegal, and also whether you’re going to ask for the release of those people who have been tried and jailed.

Ambassador Michalak: The short answer is yes, definitely. We do not believe that people should be put in jail simply for expressing their opinion, whether it’s in favor or not in favor of any particular policy. We will continue to urge the government to release those prisoners.

I think it’s article 88 which you may be referring to in terms of the law under which many of these people were arrested. Article 88 of the criminal code. I believe that yes, we would like to talk with the Government of Vietnam on ways to change that, to change that particular article, and I believe there are many even within the Government of Vietnam that believe that particular article of the criminal code is way out of date and definitely needs to be revised. So we hope to work very closely with the government on that.

Question: The U.S. is reviewing its monitoring system for Vietnamese textile exports in the first half of this year. [Inaudible] in the U.S. [inaudible]? And do you hope this system will stop soon?

Ambassador Michalak: Have you looked at recent trade figures?

Question: Yes.

Ambassador Michalak: And textile exports from Vietnam to the United States are up what, 40 percent, 50 percent? Something like that.

Question: Twenty percent.

Ambassador Michalak: I think year on year I thought it was more like 40 or 50. The figures I saw said 40 or 50. But my point is I think exports are increasing quite a bit from Vietnam to the United States in textiles. And so far there have been no dumping cases or no restrictions on the trade at all.

Not only does the United States monitor these exports to the U.S. but Vietnam itself has monitoring mechanisms set up to watch the trade. I have talked with both customers of Vietnam textiles and those who produce textiles in the United States. I believe that neither of them are completely satisfied with the monitoring systems. So it seems to me that we found a pretty good compromise.

I believe as long as the status quo continues that there’s no reason to worry about either the Vietnamese monitoring system or the U.S. monitoring system.

I’ll take one more. You get the last question.

Question: My question is, recently there was a presidential statement that compared the consequence of the withdrawal of the troops in Iraq with that of Vietnam, which is, the population saying that’s not so constructive for future relations between Vietnam and America. But can you tell us what’s the viewpoint of the executive branch of U.S. about the statement of the President?

Ambassador Michalak: I think the President’s words speak for themselves and I’m certainly not going to analyze that any further. I think the U.S.-Vietnam relationship is one which looks forward, not backward, and I believe that in doing so we have built a very strong relationship of trust and friendship and I intend to continue to build that relationship and make it stronger and deeper during the time that I’m here.

I think that’s a good note on which to end the press conference. Thank you very much.

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