He also said that he would be pleased to become El Salvador’s first ambassador to Hanoi.

The elsalvador.com website quoted Mr Gonzalez on June 7 as saying that besides Vietnam, the El Salvador government also wishes to set up diplomatic relations with China.

At present, Costa Rica is the only country in the Middle American region to have diplomatic ties with Beijing, he added.

On June 1, the first ever left-wing President of El Salvador, Mauricio Funes, announced his decision to officially re-establish diplomatic ties with Cuba. El Salvador is the last country in the Latin America to restore diplomatic ties with Cuba after severing relations with the island country 50 years ago.