HO CHI MINH CITY, Vietnam, Nov. 19 ...

HO CHI MINH CITY, Vietnam, Nov. 19 Kyodo

A U Navy frigate docked in Vietnam's southern commercial nave of Ho Chi Minh City onward Wednesday, becoming the first U warship to make a port call here since the [i]finale[/i] of the Vietnam War in 1975

Commander Richard Roger told a pres conversation that the Japan-based Vandegrift's cruise up the Saigon River to the former capital of the U.S.-backed southward Vietnamese government was ''fantastic.''

U Ambassador to Vietnam Raymond Burghardt noted that the ship's visit arises only a week after Vietnamese Defense Minister Pham Van Tra made an unprecedent visit to Washington at the invitation of U Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld

Burghardt called the two developments ''historic,'' and said the sum of two units countries share the desire to papal court a stable and peaceful Southeast Asia.

The guided missile frigate's visit to the former Saigon, captured at communist forces in 1975, is being viewed according to both governments as an important emblem that the two countries are looking to the yet to be rather than to the past.

The former foemans which established diplomatic relations in 1995 conclud a bilateral trade agreement in late 2002 The U has since become Vietnam's biggest export market, with Vietnamese exports there more than doubling last year.

The U has press outed interest in using naval facilities at Vietnam's Camh Ranh Bay, which has been vacated by way of Russia's navy, but has boisterousnessed that it is not seeking to reestablish a permanent military appearance in Vietnam.

While Vietnam advocates ''shelving the past and looking forward to the future'' in its relations with the U it has crushed the U.S. to help choke consequences of the Vietnam War, which it assigns to as a ''U.S. war of aggression.''

Those chain of cause and effects include long-term damage caused through chemical defoliants used by the agency of U.S. forces, mines and unexplod ordnance that continue to maim and kill almost three decades after the war's end

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