Hanoi (dpa) - Officials and executives at a Vietnam-Myanmar trade fair have signed several deals to boost trade between the two countries, Vietnamese media reported Thursday.

Vietnam government representatives signed a memorandum of understanding Wednesday to import more than 5 million dollars of wood from Myanmar by 2010 at the Vietnam-Myanmar Joint Conference on Trade Exchanges in Ho Chi Minh City.

At the conference, which attracted more than 50 entrepreneurs from the two countries, the Vietnamese importing company DIC said it had signed an agreement to buy
14,000 cubic metres of the tropical hardwood pyinkado from Myanmar.

"This wood is not listed on the embargo lists of the US and the European Union, so it presents no problem for us," said Nguyen Thanh The, director of DIC's wood department.

The said the wood was intended chiefly for Vietnamese customers, who like its reddish coloration for use in parquet floors and furniture.

The United States, European Union, Canada and other Western countries have barred imports of products from Myanmar as part of sanctions intended to punish the country's authoritarian military government for human rights violations.

Myanmar's military government is accused by Western countries and independent organizations of carrying out human rights violations. The sanctions were imposed after 1990, when its military junta repressed an opposition political party that overwhelmingly won the country's elections.

The junta has held the leader of the party, Nobel Peace Prize laureate Aung San Suu Kyi, under house arrest for 13 of the past 19 years.

Sanctions against the regime have proven ineffective in part because Myanmar continues to trade with its Asian neighbours.

Trade between Myanmar and Vietnam reached 108.2 million dollars in 2008, up 10 per cent from 2007. Vietnamese companies, including the state-owned oil company PetroVietnam and state-owned telecommunications firm Viettel, have operations in Myanmar. (dpa)