U.S. aircraft carrier to dock in Vietnamese port

HONG KONG — The United States plans to send an aircraft carrier to dock in Vietnam, officials from both nations said Thursday, a telling sign of Washington’s warming relations with a country that was once battered by U.S. bombs.

The proposed visit to the port of Danang comes amid heightened tensions over China’s territorial claims in the South China Sea, including to islands claimed by Vietnam. The Defense Ministry of Vietnam announced the port call while the American defense secretary, James Mattis, was in Hanoi.

Danang was where the first conventional U.S. combat unit was deployed in the Vietnam War, landing on a beach there in 1965. Hundreds of thousands more troops were to follow.

The arrival of the aircraft carrier, planned for March, would represent the largest presence of U.S. forces in Vietnam since the war ended in 1975. Smaller Navy ships have visited Vietnam as the nations' relationship has improved.

Word of the carrier’s visit comes about a week before the 50th anniversary of the Tet offensive, the military campaign by North Vietnamese and Viet Cong forces that punctured U.S. hopes of winning the war.

Vietnamese officials must give final approval for the carrier’s visit to Danang.

“We expect it will be approved, and we will have a carrier visit in Danang in March,” said Capt. Jeff Davis, a Pentagon spokesman.

Danang is also the site of a joint U.S.-Vietnamese cleanup of dioxin, the chemical contaminant in Agent Orange that has been linked to birth defects and other diseases. The United States sprayed millions of gallons of it over Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam during the war.

Vietnam has been more aggressive in contesting China’s territorial claims in the South China Sea, a marked contrast to the Philippines, which has warmed to Beijing under President Rodrigo Duterte. As tensions have escalated with China, there has been wide public support in Vietnam for closer relations with the United States.

Before his arrival Wednesday, Mattis praised Vietnam, saying the country had “one of the region’s fastest-growing economies.”

He added that “freedom of navigation and access in the South China Sea will be critical to them economically and of course in their security efforts.”