BANGKOK (AP) – An American aircraft carrier is due to make a port call in Vietnam tomorrow – a rare visit by one of the United States (US) Navy’s biggest ships.
The USS Ronald Reagan, a nuclear-powered Nimitz-class aircraft carrier, is scheduled to arrive in Da Nang tomorrow and stay through June 30, making use of a port that was modernised and expanded by the US during the war in Vietnam, the country’s Foreign Ministry announced.
It will be only the third such visit by an American aircraft carrier since the end of the hostilities.
The visit comes about a month after a Chinese navy training ship made its own port call in Da Nang as part of what it called a goodwill tour that also took it to Thailand, Brunei and the Philippines.
Japan’s largest destroyer, Izumo, made a port call in Vietnam over the past week.
“Recently, Vietnam has received visits from naval vessels from different countries, and this time it will be a visit from the USS Ronald Reagan,” Vietnam’s VnExpress online newspaper quoted Foreign Ministry spokesperson Pham Thu Hang as saying.
