Obama lifts U.S. arms ban on Vietnam

President Barack Obama announced Monday that the United States is fully lifting a decades-long ban on the sale of military equipment to Vietnam.

In a joint news conference in Hanoi with Vietnamese President Tran Dai Quang, Obama said that the removal of the ban on lethal weapons was part of a deeper defense cooperation with the country and dismissed suggestions it was aimed at countering China’s growing strength in the region.

Instead, it was the desire to continue normalizing relations between the United States and Vietnam and to do away with a ban “based on ideological division between our two countries,” he said.

The Vietnam War ended in April 1975 with the fall of Saigon – now called Ho Chi Minh City – after the United States withdrew combat forces and the North Vietnamese launched a massive offensive to reunite their homeland under communism.

US President Barack Obama and Vietnamese President Tran Dai Quang speak during a joint press conference in Hanoi on May 23, 2016. Barack Obama praised "strengthening ties" between the United States and Vietnam at the start of a landmark visit May 23, as the former wartime foes deepen trade links and share concerns over Chinese actions in disputed seas. / AFP / JIM WATSON (Photo credit should read JIM WATSON/AFP/Getty Images)

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U.S. and Vietnam agree to strengthen ties

While Vietnam and China are neighbors that share a communist ideology, China has aggressively claimed territory in the South China Sea, irking Vietnam and other Southeast Asian neighbors and also raising concerns internationally.

In a recent and provocative show of force, China flew two jets close to U.S. aircraft stationed in airspace above the disputed region.

US President Barack Obama (R) and Japanese Prime Minister Shinzo Abe shake hands after laying wreaths at the Hiroshima Peace Memorial Park in Hiroshima on May 27, 2016. Obama on May 27 paid moving tribute to victims of the world's first nuclear attack. / AFP / JIM WATSON (Photo credit should read JIM WATSON/AFP/Getty Images)

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Obama visits Vietnam, Japan

At a press briefing Monday by China’s Ministry of Foreign Affairs, ministry spokeswoman Hua Chunying said that it was appropriate for the ban to be lifted.

“(The) arms sales ban was a product of the Cold War and should no longer exist,” she told reporters. “We hope the lifting of all such bans will benefit regional peace and development. And we are happy to see the United States and Vietnam develop normal cooperative relations.”

Vietnam fisherman on the front lines of South China Sea fray

‘Developing strategic partnership’

Nguyen Ngoc Truong, president of Vietnam’s Center for Strategic Studies and International Development, hailed the move as an important symbolic development between the two countries.

“This is very good news, it is of great importance for Vietnam,” he told CNN. “It does not mean Vietnam will be (a) very big buyer of American weapons straight away, but (it) is important in the future. The symbolism is more important.”

He said China would be watching the “developing strategic partnership” between the United States and Vietnam closely – and said he expected it to contribute to peace and stability in the region.

“China should think twice over anything they can do to Vietnam or the South China Sea,” he said. “They should get the message.”

Human rights concerns

Obama defended the decision to lift the arms ban despite Vietnam’s dismal record on human rights – involving the jailing of dissidents and stalled political reforms – saying sales would be evaluated on a “case-by-case” basis.

However, Human Rights Watch Executive Director Kenneth Roth said via Twitter that Obama was opting to “arm Vietnam as (an) anti-China ally rather than care about its ongoing repression.”

Phil Robertson, deputy director of Human Rights Watch’s Asia division, said that Washington had squandered a key tool to pressure Vietnam to improve its human rights record.

“In one fell swoop, President Obama has jettisoned what remained of U.S. leverage to improve human rights in Vietnam – and basically gotten nothing for it,” he said.

“President Obama just gave Vietnam a reward that they don’t deserve.”

In 2014, the United States eased restrictions of an arms ban that originally instated during the Vietnam War.

Obama also thanked Vietnam for its continued aid in addressing what he called “the painful legacy of war,” referring to attempts to locate veterans missing in action, the removal of landmines and the cleaning up of Agent Orange.

In this June 8, 1972, photo taken by Associated Press photographer Nick Ut, a South Vietnamese plane drops a napalm bomb over Trang Bang village, which had been occupied by the North Vietnamese during the Vietnam War. Ut was only 21, but he was already a seasoned war photographer when he arrived at the village as it was being bombed. It was there that he took these photos -- one of which has come to define the Vietnam War. The photos are in chronological order.

Smoke from a napalm bomb rises over a Trang Bang church.

As bombs drop in Trang Bang, soldiers and members of the international media watch the scene in the foreground.

The aerial attack was intended for enemy forces on the outskirts of the village, but it accidentally hit South Vietnamese soldiers and civilians. Here, a man and woman carry injured children down the road following the bombing.

Women carry severely burned children down the road after the attack.

An anguished woman carries her napalm-burned child.

More injured people walk down the road.

Ut also photographed terrified children running from the site of the attack. Nine-year-old Kim Phuc, center, ripped off her burning clothes while fleeing. The powerful photograph, which won Ut a Pulitzer Prize, communicated the horrors of the war and contributed to the growing anti-war sentiment in the United States. Seven months later, the Paris Peace Accords were signed.

After taking the children's photograph, Ut took them to a hospital.

A South Vietnamese soldier crouches beside his friend who suffered severe napalm burns.

Injured civilians and soldiers flee from the site of the attack.

Television crews and South Vietnamese troops surround Phuc.

Vietnam napalm attack

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‘Symbol of renewed ties’

Earlier Monday, the two leaders shook hands in front of a large bronze bust of Vietnamese communist revolutionary leader Ho Chi Minh inside the Presidential Palace.

“We’ve come here as a symbol of the renewed ties we have made over the last several decades and the comprehensive partnership we have created over the course of my presidency,” Obama said.

Vietnam: From enemy to partner

Obama is on a weeklong trip to Asia to boost economic and security cooperation in the region and is expected to head south to Ho Chi Minh City before traveling to Japan.

President Bill Clinton reopened diplomatic ties with Vietnam in 1995 and in 2000 became the first president to travel there since the evacuation of U.S. civilian and military personnel 25 years earlier.

1960s photojournalists showed the world some of the most dramatic moments of the Vietnam War through their camera lenses. LIFE magazine's Larry Burrows photographed wounded Marine Gunnery Sgt. Jeremiah Purdie, center, reaching toward a stricken soldier after a firefight south of the Demilitarized Zone in Vietnam in 1966. Commonly known as Reaching Out, Burrows shows us tenderness and terror all in one frame. According to LIFE, the magazine did not publish the picture until five years later to commemorate Burrows, who was killed with AP photographer Henri Huet and three other photographers in Laos.

Associated Press photographer Nick Ut photographed terrified children running from the site of a Vietnam napalm attack in 1972. A South Vietnamese plane accidentally dropped napalm on its own troops and civilians. Nine-year-old Kim Phuc, center, ripped off her burning clothes while she ran. The image communicated the horrors of the war and contributed to growing U.S. anti-war sentiment. After taking the photograph, Ut took the children to a Saigon hospital.

Eddie Adams photographed South Vietnamese police chief Gen. Nguyen Ngoc Loan killing Viet Cong suspect Nguyen Van Lem in Saigon in 1968. Adams later regretted the impact of the Pulitzer Prize-winning image, apologizing to Gen. Nguyen and his family. "I'm not saying what he did was right," Adams wrote in Time magazine, "but you have to put yourself in his position."

A helicopter raises the body of an American paratrooper killed in action in the jungle near the Cambodian border in 1966. Henri Huet, a French war photographer covering the war for the Associated Press, captured some of the most influential images of the war. Huet died along with LIFE photographer Larry Burrows and three other photographers when their helicopter was shot down over Laos in 1971.

Legendary Welsh war photographer Philip Jones Griffiths captured the battle for Saigon in 1968. U.S. policy in Vietnam was based on the premise that peasants driven into the towns and cities by the carpet-bombing of the countryside would be safe. Furthermore, removed from their traditional value system, they could be prepared for imposition of consumerism. This "restructuring" of society suffered a setback when, in 1968, death rained down on the urban enclaves. In 1971 Griffiths published "Vietnam Inc." and it became one of the most sought after photography books.

Newly freed U.S. prisoner of war Air Force Lt. Col. Robert L. Stirm is greeted by his family at Travis Air Force Base in Fairfield, California, in 1973. This Pulitzer Prize-winning photograph, named Burst of Joy, was taken by Associated Press photographer Sal Veder. "You could feel the energy and the raw emotion in the air," Veder told Smithsonian Magazine in 2005.

This 1965 photo by Horst Faas shows U.S. helicopters protecting South Vietnamese troops northwest of Saigon. As the Associated Press chief photographer for Southeast Asia from 1962-1974, Faas earned two Pulitzer Prizes.

Oliver Noonan, a former photographer with the Boston Globe, captured this image of American soldiers listening to a radio broadcast in Vietnam in 1966. Noonan took leave from Boston to work in Vietnam for the Associated Press. He died when his helicopter was shot down near Da Nang in August 1969.

In June 1963, photographer Malcolm Browne showed the world a shocking display of protest. A Buddhist monk named Thich Quang Duc burned himself to death on a street in Saigon to protest alleged persecution of Buddhists by the South Vietnamese government. The image won Browne the World Press Photo of the Year.

Tim Page photographed a U.S. helicopter taking off from a clearing near Du Co SF camp in Vietnam in 1965. Wounded soldiers crouch in the dust of the departing helicopter. The military convoy was on its way to relieve the camp when it was ambushed.

Frenchman Marc Riboud captured one of the most well-known anti-war images in 1967. Jan Rose Kasmir confronts National Guard troops outside the Pentagon during a protest march. The photo helped turn public opinion against the war. "She was just talking, trying to catch the eye of the soldiers, maybe try to have a dialogue with them," recalled Riboud in the April 2004 Smithsonian magazine, "I had the feeling the soldiers were more afraid of her than she was of the bayonets."

In this 1965 Henri Huet photograph, Chaplain John McNamara administers last rites to photographer Dickey Chapelle in South Vietnam. Chapelle was covering a U.S. Marine unit near Chu Lai for the National Observer when a mine seriously wounded her and four Marines. Chappelle died en route to a hospital, the first American woman correspondent ever killed in action.

Mary Ann Vecchio screams as she kneels over Jeffrey Miller's body during the deadly anti-war demonstration at Kent State University in 1970. Student photographer John Filo captured the Pulitzer Prize-winning image after Ohio National Guardsmen fired into a crowd of protesters, killing four students and wounding nine others. An editor manipulated a version of the image to remove the fence post above Vecchio's head, sparking controversy.

For his dramatic photographs of the Vietnam War, United Press International staff photographer David Hume Kennerly won the 1972 Pulitzer Prize for feature photography. This 1971 photo from Kennerly's award-winning portfolio shows an American GI, his weapon drawn, cautiously moving over a devastated hill near Firebase Gladiator.

Hubert Van Es, a Dutch photojournalist working at the offices of United Press International, took this photo on April 29, 1975, of a CIA employee helping evacuees onto an Air America helicopter. It became one of the best known images of the U.S. evacuation of Saigon. Van Es never received royalties for the UPI-owned photo. The rights are owned by Bill Gates through his company, Corbis.

Associated Press photographer Art Greenspon captured this photo of soldiers aiding wounded comrades. The first sergeant of A Company, 101st Airborne Division, guided a medevac helicopter through the jungle to retrieve casualties near Hue in April 1968.

Iconic photos of the Vietnam War

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Record plane deal

Earlier Monday, Obama and Quang also witnessed the signing of a record $11.3 billion deal between Boeing and local airline VietJet.

VietJet’s order of 100 737 jets is the largest commercial plane order in Vietnamese history.

Obama also announced that for the “first time” the Peace Corps will be coming to Vietnam. The President said the Peace Corps will focus on teaching English there.

CNN’s Jennifer Rizzo and Kevin Liptak reported from Hanoi, and Tiffany Ap wrote from Hong Kong. CNN’s Jonathan Stayton, Steven Jiang, Tim Hume, Saima Mohsin, Pamela Boykoff and Bex Wright also contributed to this report.