Obama grapples with Vietnam arms ban on eve of trip

WASHINGTON: President Barack Obama is still grappling with a historic decision on whether to lift the US arms embargo on Vietnam just days before he travels there, the White House said on Thursday, signaling that human rights concerns could be a sticking point.

Support has grown within the US administration and on Capitol Hill to fully remove or at least further ease the ban on weapons sales, bolstering ties between former wartime enemies Washington and Hanoi to counter a rising China.

But Obama also faces stiff opposition in some quarters.

Ending the embargo - something Vietnam has long sought - would sweep away one of the last major vestiges of the Vietnam War era as Obama makes his first trip there beginning on Monday.

It would also anger Beijing, which condemned Obama’s partial lifting of the ban in 2014 as interference in the region.

Beijing demanded an end to US surveillance in the area on Thursday after two of its fighter jets carried out what the Pentagon said was an "unsafe" intercept of a US military reconnaissance aircraft. Ben Rhodes, Obama’s deputy national security adviser, said the administration has not yet finalised a decision on lifting the three-decade-old embargo but dodged a question on when - or even whether - an announcement might be made soon.