Vietnam and the United States signed an agreement that should enable Hanoi to join the World Trade Organization (WTO).
The pact lowers Hanoi's tariffs on US industrial and farm products and removes other barriers that block US companies in sectors such as telecommunications, retailing, banking, insurance and energy from doing business in Vietnam, the US Trade Representative's office said.
US officials hailed it as a milestone in a two-decades-old process of normalising relations severed by the 1957-75 Vietnam War and said it would boost US exports in one of the fastest-growing markets in Asia.
In Hanoi, the state-run Tuoi Tre(Youth) newspaper quoted an official at the Vietnamese Embassy in Washington as saying the two countries were expected to sign the agreement in early June.
Once a deal is completed, the US Congress must vote on giving the southeast Asian country of 83 million people Permanent Normal Trade Relations Status. Then Vietnam would submit its final request for WTO membership later in 2006.
Vietnam agreed to eliminate WTO-prohibited industrial subsidies as part of the pact, including in its textile sector, US trade officials said.
