Vietnam has hit back at a United States report accusing the country of wide ranging religious abuses.
A spokesman for Vietnam's foreign ministry, Le Dung, says nobody is arrested, detained or put under house arrest for religious reasons.
The spokesman says however, Vietnam cannot accept the breaking of laws to serve political purposes and individual ambitions.
Le Dung says although positive developments in Vietnam were acknowledged in the U-S State Department's annual Report on International Religious Freedom for 2003, it still contained biased remarks and was based on erroneous information Vietnam had repeatedly rejected.
The U-S report grouped Vietnam in a worst offenders category of totalitarian and authoritarian states which view religious groups as 'enemies of the state.'
The Foreign Ministry spokesman says the U-S report is not in line with positive developments in relations between Vietnam and the U-S.