HANOI, Vietnam (AP) -- A European lawmaker said Thursday he and his assistant were interrogated for four hours before being expelled from Vietnam for trying to visit a dissident Buddhist monk.
Olivier Dupuis, a Belgian member of parliament, said he and his German aide, Martin Schulthes, were deported late Wednesday after being questioned by a dozen police officers.
``They asked us what we were doing in Saigon and they wanted to know if we had contacts here,'' he told The Associated Press in a phone interview from Brussels.
Vietnam's Foreign Ministry spokesman, Le Sy Vuong Ha, confirmed Thursday that the two men were deported for ``disturbing public order.''
He accused them of trying to meet Thich Quang Do, 73, the second highest-ranking member of the Unified Buddhist Church of Vietnam and a Nobel Peace Prize nominee, while on tourist visas.
``On their arrival, they ... conducted activities other than tourism,'' he said.
Do was placed under house arrest last week for two years and is being detained in the Thanh Minh Zen Monastery.
The church's patriarch, Thich Huyen Quang, 83, who suffers from high blood pressure, arthritis and stomach ulcers, has been under house arrest since 1992.
The two men have spent more than 20 years in prison or under house arrest for advocating democracy and human rights in Vietnam.
The Unified Buddhist Church of Vietnam is one of a number of independent religious groups banned by Vietnam's Communist government, which permits only seven religious organizations to practice.
Dupuis said the Thanh Minh Zen Monastery was heavily patrolled by plainclothes policemen when he arrived Wednesday and that he and Schulthes were refused permission to meet the elderly monk.
Dupuis said he unfurled banners outside the monastery that said ``Religious Freedom for Vietnam'' and ``Freedom for Thich Quang Do.''
The two men were taken to a police station where they were interrogated before being escorted to the airport, said Dupuis, the Belgian secretary-general of Europe's Transnational Radical Party.
The crackdown on the church could become an issue in U.S. congressional debate, expected to begin this week, on an agreement to normalize trade relations with Vietnam. Opponents have brought up restrictions on human rights and religion as reasons to delay it.
Vietnam has consistently maintained that its citizens enjoy religious freedom and insists it holds no prisoners of conscience.