In an interview with Radomir Tylecote of the Conservative Human Rights Commission, Mr Elbegdorj Tsakhia, former Prime Minister of Mongolia and leader of the country’s democracy movement in the 1980s, spoke of his support for democracy in Vietnam.

‘The democracy movement has been doing excellent work for all Vietnamese’, said Mr Elbegdorj. He also made his views on Vietnam’s regime clear: ‘the only thing that limits Vietnam’s potential is its communist regime. The whole world knows the brutality of Vietnam’s regime no matter how much it conceals its violence’.

Describing Mongolia’s successes since becoming democratic, Elbegdorj spoke of the bright future he sees for Southeast Asia ‘when there is no dictatorship left’. He encouraged those within the Vietnamese regime who wish for progress to openness and freedom ‘to engrain their names in Vietnam’s history’ by contributing to change. ‘Democracy’, he said, ‘is a right inherent to every single human being’.

In the late 1980s, Mr Elbegdorj Tsakhia, then a young journalist, formed the Democratic Union, and went on to lead the country’s democracy movement to victory over communism in 1989. He has twice been elected Prime Minister, serving from April to December 1998 and August 2004 to January 2006. In March 2006, in a speech outside the Burmese Embassy in Washington DC, he called for democracy in Burma and demanded the junta release Aung San Suu Kyi from house arrest.