Amid an escalating crackdown on religious dissidents, a senior US official is due to arrive in Vietnam on Saturday on a fact-finding mission to assess the state of religious freedom in the communist nation.
The week-long mission by John Hanford, the State Department's ambassador-at-large for international religious freedom, comes as Washington faces pressure at home to get tough with Hanoi over human rights.
In a statement, the US embassy said Wednesday the aim of Hanford's visit was to learn more about the "status of religious communities and activities" and to continue talks with the government.
It said he would visit Hanoi, Ho Chi Minh City and the Central Highlands, the scene of demonstrations in February 2001 by ethnic minorities protesting against a crackdown on their Protestant faith and land confiscation.
Hanford's visit coincides with growing government efforts to curtail the activities of the Unified Buddhist Church of Vietnam (UBCV), which was outlawed in 1981 because it refused to come under Communist Party control.
According to the church's overseas information arm, the International Buddhist Information Bureau, senior UBCV monks have been placed under house arrest over the past week, dashing hopes of a rapprochement.
The foreign ministry has accused the monks of being in possession of state secrets and trying to reorganize the church with the help of outside forces.
"It's seem absolutely unexplainable why the authorities are making these missteps now," a Western diplomat said late last week. "It is almost as if they are begging to be blacklisted."
Last month the US Commission on International Religious Freedom (USCIRF), a congressionally mandated rights watchdog, called on Secretary of State Colin Powell to nominate Vietnam as a "country of particular concern" on freedom of worship -- a move which could lead to sanctions.
The commission's appeal followed the imprisonment of two nephews and a niece of a jailed Catholic priest for passing on information about their uncle and the religious situation in Vietnam to US-based activists.
Washington rebuked Hanoi following their September 10 trial, condemning the "harsh sentences" as a violation of international human rights standards.
Their uncle, Father Thadeus Nguyen Van Ly, a lifelong critic of Vietnam's religious rights record, was placed under house arrest in March 2001 a month after giving written testimony to USCIRF.
The 57-year-old priest was sentenced to 15 years in jail in October 2001, and in a gesture seen by many diplomats as an attempt by Hanoi to appease foreign criticism, a court reduced the term to 10 years in July.
However, despite frequently speaking out against Vietnan's record, the US State Department has so far declined to recommend that President George W. Bush designate Vietnam a "country of particular concern".
Discontent with the communist regime is more evident in the US Congress, where legislation was introduced in July that seeks to cap non-humanitarian aid at 2003 levels unless Hanoi meets a series of human rights benchmarks.
Although there is little chance of the measure becoming law, it has caused considerable anger in Hanoi, which is sensitive to criticism of its rights record.
Formal US-Vietnam relations were only established in 1995, a year after then-president Bill Clinton lifted a trade embargo on country.