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VN News 2, June 06
Headlines:
Lost Commandos' of Vietnam War Demand Back Pay
Belly dancing offends local tastes in Ho Chi Minh City
Vietnamese FM to attend Hong Kong handover ceremony
Vietnam Jan-May Rice Exports 1.21 Mln Tons, Up 43% On Year
Vietnam tea exports triple in first five months: report
Lost Commandos' of
Vietnam War Demand Back
Pay
By TIM WEINER
New York Times
WASHINGTON -- Nearly one year after
Congress promised them $20 million in back
pay, the "lost commandos" of the Vietnam
War -- Vietnamese soldiers dropped behind
enemy lines and then abandoned by the
United States -- have not received a penny.
Five of the 281 commandos alive last year
have died since Congress acted, said the
commandos' lawyer, John Mattes.
The men, most of whom are now in the
United States, had asked the government for
back pay -- $2,000 a year, without interest
-- for the time they spent in prison camps in
North Vietnam. Some spent more than two
decades imprisoned after the United States
deliberately wrote them off as dead.
In June of last year, Congress told the
Pentagon to pay the men what they were
owed. But military officials have resisted,
Mattes said Wednesday.
"Thirty years ago, the Pentagon abandoned
these men and betrayed them," Mattes said.
"Now it is doing it again, abandoning them
and leaving them to die. Their intent is to
bury these men."
Officials in the office of the assistant
secretary of defense for force management
policy, which is handling the commandos'
claims, did not immediately return a
telephone message Wednesday.
Documents declassified last June showed
that the United States declared the captured
commandos dead in the 1960s and buried the
failed operation under a veil of secrecy for 30
years.
U.S. intelligence sent hundreds of the
commandos into North Vietnam during the
1960s. Some were killed, but many more
were captured. The CIA ran the commandos'
mission from 1961 to 1964, when it turned
the operation over to military intelligence
officers.
The military began writing off all the
captured men as dead in 1965. Each man
was "declared a non-viable asset" after his
capture, retired Maj. Gen. John K. Singlaub,
who ran the operation from 1966 to 1968,
testified last year. After that, "they were not
the responsibility of the U.S. government,"
he said. The Pentagon abandoned the
operation in 1970.
Once the story became known through the
documents last year, Congress voted to pay
the surviving men for their lost years. But
"the Pentagon failed to carry out the will of
the 104th Congress to compensate these
brave men for their service to this nation,"
said Rep. Loretta Sanchez, a California
Democrat, attempting to see that the
commandos are paid. Congress must
reappropriate the money for this year's
budget, but has failed to do so thus far, she
said.
The Pentagon, the CIA and the Justice
Department had opposed the commandos'
request for back pay, citing an 1875 Supreme
Court ruling in a Civil War case that secret
contracts for covert operations are
unenforceable.
Congress sought to overcome that opposition
by ordering the Pentagon to pay the men last
year.
The Pentagon took the position last year that
the legislation passed by Congress was
flawed and did not amount to a legal order to
pay the men.
Technically, that may be correct, said
congressional staff members who worked on
the bill.
Belly dancing offends local
tastes in Ho Chi Minh City:
report
HANOI (AFP) - Plunging necklines and
exposed bellies and thighs of local staff at a
luxury hotel proved too risque for local
sensibilities in Ho Chi Minh City, local
reports said Thursday.
The management at the Equatorial Hotel in
the southern Vietnamese city received a stern
rebuke by local authorities from the ministry
of culture and information after hosting an
"Arabian Night" last week, the Nguoi Lao
Dong newspaper reported.
The People's Labour newspaper criticised
the hotel for forcing employees to wear
costumes which "demeaned their dignity."
Ministry officials reportedly issued a citation
to hotel management for organising the event
without official authorization.
The journal said that the director of the
cultural service would "take appropriate
actions according to the law" against the
German general manager of the 333 room
foreign joint venture hotel.
The manager could not be reached for
comment.
Vietnamese FM to attend
Hong Kong handover
ceremony
HANOI (AFP) - Vietnamese Foreign
Minister Nguyen Manh Cam will represent
Hanoi at ceremonies marking the return of
Hong Kong to Chinese sovereignty, a
ministry spokesman said Thursday.
"A the invitation of the Chinese and British
governments the Minster of Foreign Affairs
Nguyen Manh Cam ... will participate in the
ceremonies marking the handover of Hong
Kong to China on July 1," the spokesman
said at a regular press briefing.
Many world leaders and senior officials,
including US Secretary of State Madeleine
Albright, have been invited to ceremonies for
the handover from June 30 to July 1.
Vietnam Jan-May Rice
Exports 1.21 Mln Tons, Up
43% On Year
SINGAPORE (Dow Jones)-- Vietnam's
rice exports reached 1,208,305 metric tons
during January to May this year, up almost
43% from the 845,870 tons exported in the
same period a year ago, according to
statistics released by the Overseas
Merchandise Inspection Co., a Japanese
cargo surveyor in Ho Chi Minh City.
The country's May rice shipments alone
reached a whopping 462,229 tons. Of this
amount, some 168,728 tons, consisting
mostly of 10%, 25%, 35% and 100% broken
rice, were shipped to West Africa.
A substantial decline in Vietnamese rice
prices in late April and early May led to very
active demand, said a trade source in Ho Chi
Minh City. As Vietnamese prices remained
low throughout most of May, buyers
continued flocking to the country for their
rice needs, he said, adding contracts of up to
650,000 tons were rumored to have been
signed in May.
Shipments are still very active, he added.
This year, Vietnam has announced an export
quota of up to 3.5 million tons of rice.
Initially, it only released an export quota of
2.5 million tons for the first nine months of
the year.
Then in mid-May, the government decided
to allocate an additional quota of 1 million
tons, trade sources said. They said some
700,000 tons of the additional 1 million tons
will come from state-owned and provincial
exporters while the remaining 300,000 tons
will come from reserves.
Vietnam tea exports triple in
first five months: report
HANOI (AFP) - Vietnamese tea exports
trebled in the first five months of this year to
more than 2.02 million tonnes from 634
million tonnes a year earlier, a newspaper
reported here Thursday.
The Vietnam General Tea Corporation
produced 2.23 million tonnes of tea during
the period, 3.2 times as much as the first five
months of 1996 the Nhan Dan newspaper
said.
The exports in the five months were valued
at about 5.4 million dollars, it said.
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