Hanoi opts not to lease naval base

By Hao Zhou

Vietnam said Wednesday that it won't lease the Cam Ranh Bay naval base to any foreign nations for military purposes.

Cam Ranh, located on the southeastern coast of Vietnam between Phan Rang and Nha Trang, is considered the finest deepwater shelter in the South China Sea, and even in the entire Southeast Asia.

"We have noticed previous reports that both Russia and the US are scheming to step into the Cam Ranh Bay base. For the sake of Vietnam and this region's peaceful development, we decided not to lease the port to any foreign countries for military use," Nguyen Th Tung, a spokesman for the Vietnamese embassy in Beijing, told the Global Times Wednesday.

Zhuang Guotu, head of the Southeast Asian Studies Department at Xiamen University, told the Global Times that Hanoi's decision will be good for Sino-Vietnamese relations.

An October 6 report by Russia's Interfax News Agency quoted a source in the naval headquarters as saying that Russian naval command had drawn up a proposal for resum-ing the lease of the Cam Ranh Bay base.

"Cam Ranh is needed to provide support to Russian warships on anti-pirate missions in the Pacific and Indian Oceans," the official told Interfax.

Cam Ranh was the main US Air Force base during the Vietnam war, and in 1979, the Soviet Union leased the base gratis for 25 years, turning it into its largest naval base abroad.

In 2002, Russia gave up the lease after Vietnam asked it to pay an annual rent of $300 million.

In 2003, Vietnam's government started developing the Cam Ranh Gulf for civilian use. The Cam Ranh airport was inaugurated May 19, 2004, and it is now open for commercial flights, according to the Hindu newspaper.

"I didn't see any battleships or military airplanes at the base when I was there," said Cheng Gang, a Global Times reporter who visited Cam Ranh Bay in the summer of 2009.

"The Vietnamese are very confident of their own naval capabilities. They absolutely won't give Cam Ranh to foreign countries anymore, as it strived for decades to get the bay back from others' hands," he said.

The US has also shown interest in the base.

In 2005, Admiral Dennis Blair, then-commander of US forces in the Pacific, confirmed that Washington was in discussions with Hanoi to lease the Cam Ranh Bay as a US naval base.