Communist-ruled Vietnam was given the go-ahead on Thursday to join the World Trade Organisation (WTO) and become its 150th member before the end of the year. A WTO working party approved documents setting out the terms of the South-East Asian country's accession - lifting the last major hurdle to entry after 12 years of tough negotiations.
The United States, which in the 1960s and early 1970s waged war against communist North Vietnam and its guerrilla supporters in the south who together took over the whole country in 1973, praised Hanoi's "courage" in the marathon talks.
Vietnam's membership "will be an important addition to the organisation," a US official told the working party meeting, while an EU envoy said Vietnam had transformed its economy and trading system as the talks had progressed.
Hanoi's Trade Minister Truong Dinh Tuyen told the meeting his country and its 82 million people had taken on "extensive and far-reaching commitments" to open markets and economic reform and hoped to keep up the momentum.
The entry documents now go before the full WTO membership at a meeting of the body's General Council, probably on November 7. Diplomats say approval there is a foregone conclusion.
Vietnam's parliament, the National Assembly, would then have to ratify the accords and formally advise the WTO it has done so. Exactly 30 days later the nation of some 82 million people automatically becomes a member.
The go-ahead from the WTO working party - which included the United States, the EU, China, Japan and Canada - came after Vietnam agreed to open its market to foreign goods and services.
But as a WTO member, its vital textile, rice and coffee exporters will be protected by the organisation's rules from any arbitrary decisions by other countries to block imports they see as threatening their domestic producers.
Russia started its own negotiations to join the WTO two years before Vietnam and is only now edging close to completing them. The only other big countries still outside the body are Ukraine, which is also negotiating, and Iran.
Vietnam's neighbour Cambodia joined the WTO in 2004 despite warnings from regional economists that it had conceded too much in the negotiations and risked seeing its domestic firms and farms ruined by foreign competition.
Vietnam's Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung warned this month that, despite the country's rapidly growing economy, structural problems could raise difficulties in the near term.
Among the documents approved on Thursday are a detailed list of the tariffs and quotas Vietnam will apply to foreign imports, the ceilings it will apply on subsidies to its farm sector, and timetables for reducing them. A document on services - sectors like banking, insurance and telecommunications - sets out the areas Vietnam is opening to outside providers and details limits it will impose on foreign ownership of firms inside the country.
The third document, formally a report from the working party, describes Vietnam's legal and institutional trade regime and lists the commitments it has made to reform them further.
Vietnam will step further into trade diplomacy on November 17-18 when its hosts a Hanoi summit of the Asia-Pacific Economic Co-operation (APEC), a body which includes the United States, China, Russia and Japan.
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