A senior executive with the American sportswear company Nike has accused some critics of the company's labour practices in Vietnam of indirectly seeking to overthrow Vietnam's communist government.
In a letter to the head of the state controlled Vietnamese Confederation of Trades Unions, the Nike vice president, Mr Joseph Ha, said the company had faced criticism from groups whose aim was, he said, political rather than economic.
Nike's sports shoe manufacturing business is now indirectly Vietnam's largest single employer. Factories run by the company's South Korean and Taiwanese sub-contractors currently employ more than 30,000 people in Vietnam.
Last year, however, Nike's labour practices in Asia were the target of criticism from labour groups in the United States.
Political pressure
In Vietnam, Nike was accused of failing to ensure that its sub-contractors paid adequate wages and that they met appropriate environmental standards.
Now in a letter carried in the trades union newspaper "Laodong", a senior Nike official has suggested that the campaign was at least partly motivated by politics.
A company vice-president, Joseph Ha, wrote that Nike had attracted the attention of overseas Vietnamese groups and others whose political objective was to create what he described as a so-called democratic society in Vietnam.
They target Nike, he argued, because the company creates many jobs in Vietnam.
'Hostile elements'
The remarks are an apparent reference to the role in the anti-Nike campaign of one specific New York-based group, Vietnam Labour Watch, which is headed by an American Vietnamese.
However that organisation was only one of a number of labour groups across the United States involved in the campaign. Last year Vietnam's official press also highlighted cases of abuse by Asian managers at factories working for Nike in Vietnam.
However, the trades union newspaper now argues that workers' legitimate complaints had been exploited by hostile elements abroad - evidence that the Vietnamese authorities do not want the anti-Nike campaign to jeopardise the company's involvement in Vietnam.
Country profiles
Nike
Boycott Nike: Vietnam Labour Watch Reports
The BBC is not responsible for the content of external internet sites.
Indonesia rules out Aceh independence
DiCaprio film trial begins
Millennium sect heads for the hills
Uzbekistan voices security concerns
Chinese imports boost US trade gap
(From Business)
ICRC visits twelve Burmese jails
Falintil guerillas challenge East Timor peackeepers
Malaysian candidates named
North Korea expels US 'spy'
Holbrooke to arrive in Indonesia
China warns US over Falun Gong
Thais hand back Cambodian antiques