US urged to keep pressing Vietnam on religion curbs

WASHINGTON, Nov 7 (Reuters) A government panel has urged the United States to keep Vietnam on a list of serious violators of religious freedom, saying the communist state's reform of policies on faith did not go far enough.

The US Commission on International Religious Freedom said Vietnam should remain on the State Department's upcoming 2006 list of ''countries of particular concern'' despite Hanoi's relaxation of some curbs under an agreement with Washington last year.

''Severe restrictions on religious freedom and abuses continue in Vietnam in all of the areas cited by the State Department when Vietnam was designated a CPC (country of particular concern) in 2004,'' the commission said in a letter to Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice yesterday.

The letter by Commission Chair Felice Gaer also urged Rice to ''prominently discuss religious freedom concerns'' when she visits Vietnam next week for an Asia-Pacific conference also to be attended by President George W. Bush.

The Commission said Vietnam continued to arrest religious leaders or keep them under house arrest and cited cases of forced renunciations of faith among ethnic minority Protestants and monks and nuns of the Unified Buddhist Church of Vietnam.

''Vietnam's new laws on religion are being used to restrict and control freedom rather than protect it,'' Gaer wrote.

The United States should keep Vietnam on the religious freedom watchlist to press further Vietnamese changes, the commission said. It recommended US assistance programs to support legal reform, economic development for ethnic minorities, and to develop civil society.

The 2005 State Department report to the US Congress named Vietnam, China, North Korea, Myanmar, Iran, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Eritrea as severe violators of religious rights.

Reuters DH VP0538