The Vietnamese authorities are to abolish a 10-year-old decree which allows detention without trial.
Critics of the controversial regulation say it is often used to detain opponents of the government.
The measure has also been specifically mentioned during the human rights dialogue between Vietnam and the US.
The move comes as the US is expected to normalise trade relations with Vietnam ahead of a trip to Hanoi by US President George W Bush.
An official at the US State Department said Hanoi's decision had been conveyed to US Assistant Secretary of State Barry Lowenkron when he was visiting the Vietnamese capital two weeks ago.
"Whoever is detained will have to know what they are being detained for and be given an opportunity to go to court and to meet with a lawyer - rights which were not granted before," said Michael Orona, the US State Department's deputy director of the Bureau of Democracy, Human Rights and Labour.
Hanoi has been under pressure to make progress on human rights issues ahead of a vote in the US Congress on a bill normalising trade relations with Vietnam.
Jesus fucking Christ...the US in this "dialogue"....the hypocrisy is thicker than my cock.
America has become a country that projects everything that it is not and condemns everything that it is. - Kevin Tillman
yep, habeas corpus weakened, double jeopardy replaced with triple jeopardy, no right to silence in certain kinds of cases (like terrorism - since the IRA, so not new), free speech undermined by hate speech laws
looks like we exported all our freedom to iraq after all
there's a renewed attempt to prosecute Rumsfeld et al for war crimes using the new miltary detainee act to argue the retro immunization from war crimes prosecution, iis an effort to block prosecution and therefore they have the right to prosecute in a different country (a doctrine known as universal jurisdiction)
nice idea, though immunizing the political culture against being infected in the first place by scumbags like rumsfeld would be more effective. judicial action, however worthy, is no substitute for political change
