Jolie on fast track for Vietnamese adoption

Angelina Jolie, right, with her daughter Zahara, and Brad Pitt, left, with Jolie's son Maddox, walk near the Gateway of India, unseen, in Mumbai, India, on Nov. 12, 2006.[AP photo]

HANOI  - Hollywood movie star Angelina Jolie is set to adopt a Vietnamese boy in May after being fast-tracked through the system, the nation's top adoption official said Wednesday.

The process is being speeded up because Jolie had already chosen the child on a previous visit to an orphanage on the outskirts of the southern business hub of Ho Chi Minh City, the official told AFP.

"She might receive her adoptive child in three months, one month earlier than the normal time frame for an adoption," said Vu Duc Long, the head of the justice ministry's international child adoption department in Hanoi.

"He is between four and five and now stays at the Tam Binh orphanage," he said.

Jolie filed the first application papers three months ago.

During last November's Thanksgiving holiday, Jolie and her partner, fellow screen idol Brad Pitt, travelled to Ho Chi Minh, the communist state's largest city, and spent several hours playing with children in the orphanage.

Some local media reports earlier said the Hollywood power couple, who were photographed riding a motorcycle through the streets of the former Saigon, had asked for detailed information about a boy there.

An application sent by Jolie to Hanoi through a US agency last week has now been approved by Vietnam's top adoption agency and transferred to Ho Chi Minh City's justice department, Long said.

Under Vietnamese regulations, the file will now need another seal from the city's justice department before being sent to the orphanage.

Jolie and Pitt already have a baby daughter, Shiloh, born last May, as well as adopted children Maddox, five, from Cambodia, and Zahara, two, who is from Ethiopia.