Vietnam wedding hit by mass beef poisoning, 165 fall ill
Vietnam seeks to boost forces with main battle tank buy
Foul play suspected in Vietnam fraud scandal death
Vietnam says offended by Cambodia's Ranariddh
Vietnam: Concern at China's economic grip
Other short news
Vietnam wedding hit by mass beef poisoning, 165 fall ill
Hanoi (dpa) - One person died and 165 others fell ill after being
poisoned by eating half-cooked water buffalo meat at a wedding party
in central Vietnam, officials reports said Wednesday.
It was the biggest case ever of food poisoning in central Quang Ngai
province, which has year-round hot weather, and where there was a
similar case last October, when another wedding party of more than 100
fell ill.
Most of the guests started vomiting soon after eating the meat which
had been bought three days prior and left on ice, reported the Vietnam
News.
Others suffered from severe dehydration from prolonged diarrhoea
before mobile health teams could reach the isolated fishing village of
Binh Chau in Binh Son district.
An 83-year old woman died before health workers could treat her.
The provincial health department director said the unrestrained use of
insecticides and the lack of safe drinking water were key reasons for
food poisoning.
Phan Tu A, the health department director, told the paper that the
province had launched a campaign to discourage traders from spraying
fruit with insecticides which they claim makes the food look fresher.
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Vietnam seeks to boost forces with main battle tank buy
Jane's Defence Weekly
Vietnam is negotiating to buy an unknown number of main battle tanks
(MBTs) from the former Yugoslavian republic of Serbia-Montenegro,
according to sources in Hanoi.
The initiative is aimed at bolstering the armoured component of the
Vietnam People's Army (VPA), which has up to 700 ageing T-54/55 MBTs -
some of which may have been upgraded locally. Other MBTs in the
inventory include up to 350 T-34/85s and 250 T-62s.
These sources told Jane's Defence Weekly that Vietnamese officials
have made several trips to Belgrade in connection with the proposed
purchase of MBTs described loosely as "a substantially improved
version of the T-55". Serbia is not known to produce the T-55 though
it had several hundred in its inventory.
The former Yugoslavia produces the M-84 MBT, which is derived from the
Soviet T-72 and incorporates local modifications.
An improved version, the M-84A, was introduced in 1988 and development
of a new MBT was started in 1990.Yugoslavia has exported the M-84 to
Kuwait.
Tight budgets, ageing equipment and declining strength have strongly
affected the once-powerful VPA, greatly reducing its offensive
capabilities. The push to partially modernise its MBT fleet, combined
with an acquisition from France within the past two years of armoured
vehicles, appears to be aimed at addressing these problems.
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Foul play suspected in Vietnam fraud scandal death
HANOI, June 4 (Reuter) - Mystery still shrouded the bizarre
death of a senior executive at Vietnam's scandal-hit Minh Phung
company on Wednesday, but judicial investigators now believe
murder was the most likely cause.
Police declined to comment on their inquiries into Nguyen
Van Ha's grisly end, but the Nguoi Lao Dong newspaper said the
investigators felt there was a 95-percent chance he was
murdered by a professional hit-man.
"It can be 95-percent confirmed that it was murder," the
paper said. "But the murderer is a professional and very few
traces were left, which makes it (investigation) very
difficult."
Ha's decomposing body was found last Saturday inside a
lift-engine room on the roof terrace of state-owned Incombank's
headquarters in Ho Chi Minh City after bank employees
complained of a smell. He had died three days earlier.
His face, strapped by a metal cord against an electrical
circuit board, was partially burnt and his neck broken.
Ha, 44, was deputy director of the garments-to-property
conglomerate Minh Phung, whose namesake boss has been arrested
along with 15 other company executives for suspected fraud.
Minh Phung defaulted on a loan of about $17.1 million from
state-owned Vietcombank. The loan was secured with large
quantities of steel and other commodities, which were
"borrowed" from trading company EPCO but which had already been
sold.
However, that loan was just the tip of the company's
massive debts, much of which were run up by headlong investment
in the country's slumping property market.
Newspaper reports put the company's debt mountain at some
$370 million and say that Incombank is owed the lion's share of
that sum.
Investigators found neither fingerprints nor footprints
beside Ha's body, but were focusing on a black streak on the
engine room wall. They believe that rubber from Ha's shoe soles
may have left the mark as his body was lugged into the room.
As the Minh Phung executive in charge of finances, Ha would
have been familiar with the firm's suspected wheeling and
dealing.
State-controlled newspapers, which ran long accounts and
even graphics to explain how Ha might have died, said he had
been acting nervously in the days before his death, smoking
more heavily than normal and visiting pagodas.
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Vietnam says offended by Cambodia's Ranariddh
By Adrian Edwards
HANOI, June 4 (Reuter) - Relations between Vietnam and
Cambodia took a turn for the worse on Wednesday as the Foreign
Ministry in Hanoi blasted Prince Norodom Ranariddh over
comments about a monument to Khmer-Vietnam friendship.
The Cambodian First Prime Minister told journalists on
Tuesday that the central Phnom Penh statue had stood for too
long and would be removed if his royalist FUNCINPEC party won
an election next year.
The monument, near the National Assembly, depicts a
Vietnamese soldier and a Cambodian comrade standing
protectively over a Khmer woman and her baby.
Hanoi's indignant riposte a day later said the prince's
remarks were offensive.
"If there was such a statement it's regrettable," a
ministry spokesman said. "It offends the emotions and runs
counter to the interests of the two countries."
"Vietnam determinedly condemns provocative actions and
attempts to sabotage the long-time relationship of cooperation
and friendship between the Vietnamese and Cambodian people."
Relations between the two neighbours have rarely been easy.
A history of tension and conflict dates back centuries.
A memorial to Vietnamese war dead in the southern Cambodian
port of Sihanoukville was slightly damaged by a bomb blast at
the weekend.
The monument was built following Vietnam's late 1978
invasion of Cambodia and subsequent toppling of the Khmer Rouge
"Killing Fields" regime.
The invasion led to the installation of a sympathetic
administration and a decade-long period of occupation by
Vietnamese forces.
Hanoi formally condemned the attack on the memorial in a
statement issued late on Sunday. It also protested earlier this
month over attacks in April on ethnic-Vietnamese in
northeastern Cambodia in which 12 people were killed and 16
injured.
A commentary on Wednesday in the official Quan Doi Nhan Dan
(People's Army) newspaper said political tension in Cambodia
was increasing, blaming Ranariddh's FUNCINPEC for the trouble.
Ranariddh is locked in a power struggle with his co-prime
minister Hun Sen, who was premier of the Hanoi-backed
government which ruled until a peace treaty ended Cambodia's
civil war in 1991.
Quan Doi Nhan Dan warned that politicians in Cambodia
should not misinterpret the intent behind a recent decision by
the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) to admit the
country, along with Burma and Laos, as a member in July.
"Incidents in political life in Cambodia make analysts feel
worried. ASEAN... has agreed to accept three new members
including Cambodia in July, but instability in Cambodia is
still a matter of international and regional concern," it said.
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Vietnam: Concern at China's economic grip
Financial Times
By Jeremy Grant in Hanoi
Vietnam is worried Beijing may use Hong Kong's considerable economic
clout as leverage against Hanoi should relations between the two
communist neighbours again turn sour. Concern is centred on the
hundreds of Hong Kong companies that spearheaded a drive by foreign
investors into Vietnam in the early 1990s and have established a firm
foothold.
Some in the Vietnamese leadership are apparently nervous that these
companies have connections with mainland Chinese business interests.
Strong trade ties between Vietnam and Hong Kong are also a worry.
"It's a concern that Hong Kong is in the hands of Beijing. China has
additional influence to introduce pressure on us," said one
influential party member.
Relations between the two have ranged from mutual suspicion to
outright hostility, most recently in 1979 when they fought a brief
border war. Centuries-old rivalries surfaced again in March when the
presence of a Chinese oil rig in disputed waters erupted into a tense
diplomatic stand-off.
Diplomats say that event has prompted close scrutiny of the
implications for Vietnam of the Hong Kong handover.
Communist party sources said the party general secretary, Mr Do Muoi,
plans a trip to Beijing as soon as possible for a first-hand view of
China's stance towards Vietnam since the death of Deng Xiaoping, the
paramount leader.
Vietnam worries over the huge amount of Chinese goods smuggled across
the two countries' porous border.
Bilateral trade is estimated at about $500m a year with cheap Chinese
products undercutting their Vietnamese competitors, threatening
Vietnam's fragile manufacturing base.
China is ranked 21st among foreign investors, with 43 projects valued
at $77m. Vietnam is wary of ethnic Chinese capital inflows and has
encouraged investment from Taiwan and Singapore as a way of achieving
balance.
Hong Kong is the second biggest foreign investor in Vietnam, with
projects under way for New World Group, Luks Industry, rice producer
Golden Resources, Bank of East Asia and a hotel investment held
indirectly by Mr Li Ka-shing, the Hong Kong billionaire with strong
contacts in Beijing.
However, some play down Vietnamese fears of mainland Chinese influence
through such companies: "I think a lot of people are concerned about
that. But perhaps some of those fears are exaggerated," said Mr Ian
Lewis, a partner in Ho Chi Minh City with Johnson Stokes & Master, a
Hong Kong-based law firm.
Nevertheless, there are recent signs that China has been courting Hong
Kong businesses.
Beijing's embassy in Hanoi has approached Hong Kong businessmen with a
proposal to set up a Hong Kong chamber of commerce under its auspices.
And earlier this week China's consul general in Ho Chi Minh City made
an unprecedented appearance as guest of honour at a business luncheon
for Hong Kong businessmen in the city's New World Hotel.
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BRAIN DRAIN: University graduates in Vietnam were increasingly
being lured into the private sector to the detriment of state-run
firms, the French-language Courrier du Vietnam newspaper warned on
Friday.
The paper said a recent survey in Ho Chi Minh City had shown 50.9
per cent of graduates went into the private sector as opposed to 36
per cent in the public sector. The growing number of foreign joint
ventures were also luring graduates with higher wages and the
prospect of training overseas. -- AFP.
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JOINT VENTURES: Vietnam's army had formed 55 joint ventures with
foreign partners since the country adopted a code on foreign
investment 10 years ago, the army daily Quan Doi Nhan Dan said.
These joint ventures represented a total investment of US$646
million (S$904 million), mainly in industry, hotels, the textile
industry and services, the daily said. -- AFP.