PARIS, Oct. 28 (UPI) -- President Tran Duc Luong of Vietnam arrived in Paris Monday, paying the first visit to France by a Vietnamese leader in more than half a century.
Luong meets with French President Jacques Chirac for talks aimed at boosting trade and investment relations between the two countries. Chirac will also welcome Luong to an official dinner at the Elysee Palace Monday evening.
During his 4-day trip, Luong was to meet with French lawmakers and business leaders in Paris and Lyon.
"The visit of President Luong constitutes an important step in the development of the French-Vietnamese partnership," a French Foreign Ministry spokesman said last week, adding Paris hoped to reinforce economic, scientific and other exchanges with Hanoi.
As Vietnam's former colonial ruler, France remains Hanoi's top non-Asian investor and development donor, with almost $72 million in French aid earmarked in 2001. French companies have also sunk roughly $2 million into Vietnam, and trade ties have grown 8-fold over the past decade, according to the French Foreign Ministry.
Besides looking for ways to increase economic links, French and Vietnamese officials are also expected to discuss ways to boost the number of Vietnamese children adopted in France.
Traditionally, France has accounted for almost half the Vietnamese children adopted overseas.
But Luong's visit to Paris is not without controversy. Several groups recently sent a joint letter to Chirac, criticizing Hanoi's human rights record.
"It seemed to us a paradox that President Jacques Chirac is meeting with Tran Duc Luong -- the president of one of a country which is one of the worst violators of human rights -- without raising the situation of political prisoners and religious prisoners in Vietnam," said Penelope Faulkner, vice president of the Paris-based Vietnam Committee on Human Rights, in an interview.
Of particular concern, Faulkner said, is the status of three political dissidents -- two of them prominent Vietnamese clergy -- imprisoned in Vietnam.
The French government is expected to include all three names in a list of dissidents it will present Vietnamese officials, Faulkner said.
Since Paris and Hanoi reestablished diplomatic relations in 1973, both Chirac and former French President Francois Mitterrand visited Vietnam.
But Luong's visit is the first by a Vietnamese leader since a 1946 trip by the country's Communist founder, Ho Chi Minh.
