President Obama said at a news conference on Monday in the Vietnamese capital that the United States had agreed to lift completely its embargo on lethal weapons sales.
“The United States is fully lifting the ban on the sale of military equipment to Vietnam that has been in place for some 50 years,” Mr. Obama said.
Vietnam had long asked for the embargo to be revoked. The decision, which comes more than 40 years after the end of the Vietnam War in 1975, involved weighing Vietnam’s human rights record against the country’s need to defend itself against an increasing threat from China, its neighbor.
