HANOI: US Senator John McCain said on Friday he was confident of bipartisan support in Washington for easing restrictions on arms sales to Vietnam as early as next month.

Together with Senator Sheldon Whitehouse, McCain met Vietnam’s prime minister and the ruling Communist Party’s chief on Friday. Both senators said Vietnam needed better maritime capabilities and its human rights record had improved enough to justify more military support from Washington.

The push to roll back the three-decade old arms embargo comes as Vietnam, like US allies the Philippines and Japan, is locked in a dispute with an increasingly assertive China over sovereignty in the energy-rich South China Sea.

“The time has come for the United States to begin easing our lethal arms embargo on Vietnam,” McCain told reporters in Hanoi. “We hope to begin the easing of that as early as September ... We’re not guaranteeing it but we do believe we have very strong bipartisan support.”

Washington wants to court Vietnam as a new ally in Southeast Asia to counter the growing influence of its communist neighbor, China. But Vietnam’s record of arresting and jailing its critics and suppressing free speech has made it difficult to build a case for expanding military ties.

McCain, a former prisoner of war in Vietnam, is the ranking Republican on the Senate Armed Services Committee.