April 12 (Bloomberg) -- Vietnamese security forces fought ``extremists'' in two provinces in the central part of the country, the government said after reports of protests in the area that resulted in violence.

On Saturday, the U.S. Embassy in Hanoi told its citizens in the Southeast Asian nation not to travel to Dak Lak province in the country's Central Highlands after receiving ``credible reports of violent protests'' in Buon Ma Thuot, capital of Dak Lak. The embassy today extended the notice to Gia Lai province, north of Dak Lak.

In 2001, ethnic unrest in Dak Lak and Gia Lai caused Vietnam's government to take action against Protestant ethnic minorities, according to the U.S. State Department. Many of the minorities were protesting because of the loss of traditional homelands to recent migrants, mostly ethnic Vietnamese from elsewhere, said a 2003 U.S. report on religious freedom.

``Over the past few days, some extremist elements in several localities in Dak Lak and Gia Lai provinces, with instigation from outside, have carried out activities of causing public disorder,'' said Vietnamese Foreign Ministry spokesman Le Dung in a statement.

``They even fought against authorities, damaging public welfare works and assets in some communes,'' Dung said. ``Local authorities have taken measures to stabilize the situation.''

The U.S. Embassy said its consulate-general in Ho Chi Minh City had ``heard reports of police roadblocks preventing travel into the area, and that Vietnam Airlines will not board foreigners on flights to the Central Highlands.''

Technical Reasons

No passengers have been prohibited from traveling to the Central Highlands, said Vietnam Airlines spokesman Nguyen Tan Chan. Recent flights operated to the region have been full while other flights have been canceled for technical reasons, he said.

U.S. diplomats who were traveling by car from Ho Chi Minh City to the Central Highlands over the weekend on a previously scheduled trip to the region were stopped by authorities in Binh Phuoc province, southwest of Dak Lak, ``and told to turn around'' according to Raymond Burghardt, the U.S. ambassador to Vietnam.

``I've asked people in the Foreign Ministry if they could find out what happened there,'' Burghardt told journalists today in Hanoi. ``I will also ask when we can send people to the area, because it's obviously best to have people visit the area in order to find out what's going on and not have to rely on rumors.''

Suspicion

Ethnic minority Protestants in Vietnam's Central Highlands who follow a type of evangelical Christianity combining cultural pride and aspirations for control over ancestral lands are viewed with suspicion and have faced persecution by the government, the U.S.-based group Human Rights Watch said last year.

``We regularly like to send people into those areas,'' said Burghardt. ``It would be useful from Vietnam's point of view to have people from our embassy and maybe from some other embassies go in to get an accurate picture.''

Hundreds of asylum seekers from ethnic minority communities in the Central Highlands, collectively known as Montagnards, crossed into Cambodia after the 2001 unrest, according to a report released last year by Amnesty International.

More than 70 Montagnards have been sentenced to prison in Vietnam for taking part in protests or trying to flee to Cambodia since February 2001, Human Rights Watch said last year.

Vietnam's government ``vehemently rejects all ill-willed slanderous and distortive rhetoric on so-called `ethnic and religious persecution' in Vietnam,'' the Foreign Ministry's Dung said today.

Jail Terms

Last May, Vietnamese authorities sentenced 15 people in the region to jail terms for ``inciting locals to create social disorder and instability,'' the Vietnam News reported at the time. The accused were found to have distributed prohibited documents and to have ``prepared logistics for long-term rioting,'' the newspaper said.

Sam Brownback, a Republican from Kansas who chairs the U.S. Senate's East Asian and Pacific Affairs Subcommittee, visited Vietnam this year to assess religious freedom in the country after receiving ``numerous reports of religious persecution,'' according to a statement by Brownback released during his visit.

``I continue to have concerns about religious liberty in Vietnam,'' he said in the January statement.