Vietnam's top soldier visits US

The visit completes an exchange begun under Clinton

US Defence Secretary Donald Rumsfeld has held historic talks with his Vietnamese counterpart, Pham Van Tra.

It is the first such visit to the Pentagon by a Vietnamese defence minister since the Vietnam War.

Monday's meeting is seen as a symbolic landmark in what has been a slow and wary reconciliation between old foes, a BBC correspondent reports.

An official US statement said the two men had discussed co-operation on regional and global security.

Missing issue

Donald Rumsfeld's predecessor, William Cohen, visited Vietnam three years ago but this was the first visit to Washington by a Vietnamese defence minister in the nearly three decades since the end of the Vietnam war.

According to the Pentagon, Donald Rumsfeld acknowledged the importance of continued Vietnamese co-operation in accounting for missing American military personnel.

Before being ushered into the Pentagon, Vietnam's defence minister had been at the State Department where, according to the American side, the US had raised concerns about religious freedom in Vietnam.

The Vietnamese minister for his part objected to legislation now before the US Congress which would criticise Vietnam's record on that front.