Security and trade tops agenda as Obama meets Vietnam leaders

HANOI (May 23): Barack Obama will meet communist Vietnam's senior leaders on Monday, kicking off a landmark visit that caps two decades of post-war rapprochement, as both countries look to push trade and check Beijing's growing assertiveness in the South China Sea.

The visit to the dynamic and rapidly growing southeast Asian nation is Obama's first -- and the third by a sitting president since the end of hostilities in 1975.

In that time the two countries have experienced an astonishing turnaround in their relations from bitter foes physically and psychologically scarred by a decade of war to increasingly co-dependent regional allies.

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