HANOI, Oct 3 (AFP) - Communist-ruled Vietnam angrily rejected Thursday a recommendation by a US government advisory panel that it be added to a list of countries that violate religious freedoms.
"In Vietnam the right to religious and non-religious freedom is stipulated clearly in the constitution and in other laws and is guaranteed in practice," foreign ministry spokeswoman Phan Thuy Thanh told reporters.
"This is another act illustrating the extreme lack of judgement and prejudice of the US Commission on International Religious Freedom."
The panel recommended on Monday that Vietnam, together with China, India, Iran, Iraq, Laos, Myanmar, North Korea, Pakistan, Saudi Arabia, Sudan and Turkmenistan be designated as as "countries of particular concern" by the US State Department.
It is the first time the commission has asked for Vietnam, India and Pakistan to be added to the list.
The commission was established under the 1998 International Religious Freedom Act, which requires that countries found to be in severe violation of religious freedom be considered by the US president for diplomatic or economic sanctions.
Thanh urged the State Department not to accept the commission's advice, warning that "it could have a negative impact on the smooth development of relations between Vietnam and the United States."
Diplomatic relations between the two former military foes were only established in 1995, some 20 years after the fall of Saigon to North Vietnamese communist forces.
Bilateral ties have improved slowly since then, culminating in the signing of the landmark, tariff-slashing US-Vietnam bilateral trade agreement in July 2000 after six years of tortuous negotiations.
However, Vietnam remains extremely sensitive to any criticism from other governments or external organizations about its human rights record.
International rights groups have long charged Vietnam with suppressing religious freedoms and jailing church leaders in an attempt to prevent any challenge to the Communist Party's monopoly on power.
In particular, they have accused Hanoi of systematically targeting Protestant Christians among the ethnic minority hill tribes, known as Montagnards, in the impoverished Central Highlands region, the scene of widespread unrest last year.
In February this year a delegation from the US Commission on International Religious Freedom visited Vietnam and noted that religious dissidents continued to be detained or imprisoned.
Last month a European Parliament delegation was prevented from meeting with Thich Quang Do, the deputy head of the Unified Buddhist Church of Vietnam (UBCV), who remains under house arrest.
Hanoi banned the UBCV in 1981, following its refusal to come under the control of the state-sanctioned church.
The six-member team of legislators was also denied access to Father Thadeus Nguyen Van Ly, a Catholic priest who was jailed for 15 years in October last year for "harming national unity".
A lifelong critic of Vietnam's record on religious rights, Ly infuriated the government by providing a written testimony to the commission.