The newspaper highlighted the photo of US Secretary Donald Rumsfeld and Vietnamese Defence Minister General Pham Van Tra reviewing the guard of honour of the Vietnamese People’s Army during Mr Rumsfeld’s visit to Vietnam early this month.

The article’s author said that most countries around the world have the Permanent Normal Trade Relations (PNTR) with the US, including its former enemies in the Cold War. Only a handful of countries are not members of the club, and they tend to be supporters of international terrorism or weapons proliferators. Vietnam shares none of these characteristics, the author said.

Explaining why Vietnam has to wait longer than other countries to reach the normalisation with the US, the news paper quoted Mr Sedgwick Tourison, a war veteran and now consultant and Vietnamese language interpreter and author, as saying: “For us, the war in Vietnam was different, because we didn't come home victoriously. We put World War II behind us much faster, but most veterans now feel the Vietnam War should be over as well.”

Author Thomas Jandl said that in recent years, the United States has become Vietnam's top export market. With annual economic growth rates consistently edging towards the double digits over the last decade, Vietnam offers great promise to America's industry.

“It was not surprising, then, that more than 100 top US firms signed on to join a US-Vietnam WTO coalition, to support Vietnam's membership in the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and bring this emerging economic power house into the world's most important rules-based trade regime,” he added.