Vietnam needs 'rights progress' for US weapons
Following a visit to the communist Southeast Asian nation, McCain told reporters in Bangkok that Hanoi had a "long long list" of arms it would like to buy. But the US delegation "specifically stated to the Vietnamese that our security relationship will be directly impacted by the human rights issues", said McCain, a former prisoner of war in Vietnam. "There has not been progress on human rights issues, in fact there has been some backward movement on it." Senator Joe Lieberman added that approval from US Congress was necessary for ally Vietnam to get "lethal" weapons specifically. "There's certain weapons systems that the Vietnamese would like to buy from us or receive from us and we'd like to be able to transfer these systems to them, but it's not going to happen unless they improve their human rights record," he said. Rights groups say dozens of peaceful political critics and campaigners have been sentence