VN News (Feb. 4-5, 1997)

[vuca@envi.env.civil.saitama-u.ac.jp (Vu Thanh Ca)]

Mar 05: Vietnam PM says compulsory labour to be used in reforestation plan
Mar 05: Vietnam asks Interpol to help nab female embezzlement mastermind 
Mar 05: Vietnam: Sr. Communist Party Official Huynh Cuong Dies At 72
Mar 04: Peterson approved by US Senate committee as ambassador to Vietnam 


Wednesday - Mar 05, 1997 

Vietnam PM says compulsory labour to be used in reforestation plan
Hanoi (dpa) -  Vietnam's prime minister has suggested that compulsory
labour be used to help the country's reforestation programmes, according
to a state-controlled media report Wednesday.   

A controversial government plan to use 10 days of ``donated'' labour
each year from all able-bodied  Vietnamese has raised eyebrows both here
and abroad.

The plan, unveiled in January, has called for the extra labour to be
devoted to major infrastructural projects, including a new north-south
expressway, but this is the first time other uses have been mooted.   

``Make use of compulsory labour in reforestation for environment
protection,'' Prime Minister Vo Van Kiet was quoted as saying by the
Saigon Times Daily.   

He made the comment at a recent interagency governmental meeting
devoted to a major new effort to stem deforestation and begin
substantial reforestation.   

Forest cover has been reduced from 43 per cent of the country in 1943
to 26 per cent by 1993, the paper noted.   

The prime minister has also called for the complete reorganization of
the wood processing industry, including the state takeover of foreign
joint ventures that do not comply with the new policy of thrift, the
paper reported.   

Specific reforestation goals were not spelled out, but the Ministry of
Agriculture and Rural Development has been ordered to report back later
this month with a nation-wide plan.   

The compulsory labour scheme, which actually revives existing work
obligations, acts as a tax on urban dwellers, who can buy their way out
of the work, and makes use of massive underemployment in rural areas.


Wednesday - Mar 05, 1997 

Vietnam asks Interpol to help nab female embezzlement mastermind

Hanoi (dpa) -  Vietnam has asked Interpol to launch an international
manhunt for the female mastermind of an embezzlement ring that bilked
state firms of millions of dollars, and she is to be tried in absentia,
a local newspaper reported Wednesday.   

Tran Xuan Hoa, is believed to have escaped to Cambodia with several
million dollars herself sometime in 1994,  Vietnamese officials have
said.

Her brother, Pham Minh Tong, was sentenced to death on January 21 by
the Ho Chi Minh City People's Court for his involvement in the case,
which centered around fraudulent fertilizer transactions.   

The court also condemned a second man to death, sentenced one
defendant to life imprisonment, another for 20 years and three others to
six years in what was at the time the biggest fraud case ever tried in 
Vietnam.   

But this case was overshadowed the following week by the so-called
TAMEXCO case which involved a Communist Party-affiliated company where
officials embezzled roughly 40 million dollars, more than twice the
amount in the previous case.   

Four state officials were sentenced to death and 16 others got tough
prison sentences in that case, which was meant to demonstrate the ruling
party's determination to combat rising corruption.   

Prime Minister Vo Van Kiet ordered the Ministry of Interior, the
Supreme People's Inspectorate and the Supreme People's Court to try Hoa
in absentia, according to the Wednesday report in Tuoi Tre (Youth)
newspaper.

Wednesday - Mar 05, 1997 

Vietnam: Sr. Communist Party Official Huynh Cuong Dies At 72 

HANOI (AP-Dow Jones)--A longtime  Vietnamese revolutionary cadre and
senior Communist Party official has died in southern  Vietnam, an
official report said Wednesday.   

Huynh Cuong, 72, a onetime guerrilla leader in South  Vietnam during
the  Vietnam War, died Tuesday, the Communist Party newspaper, The
People, said.

Cuong died of an unspecified ailment in his hometown of Can Tho, 169
kilometers southwest of Ho Chi Minh City, formerly Saigon, the capital
of South  Vietnam.   

Cuong, an ethnic Khmer, was a senior official in the National
Liberation Front, the communist uprising founded in 1960 and backed by
North  Vietnam in its war against Saigon.   

Between 1968 and 1975, he served as a senior advisor to the
provisional government in the south. Areas controlled by the National
Liberation Front, or Viet Cong, were administered by a de facto
administration during the war.   

Cuong, a teacher from the southern province of Soc Trang, joined the
liberation front at 18 in his home village.   

After North and South  Vietnam were reunited in 1975, Cuong served in
various positions within the Communist Party and in the National
Assembly.   

He became vice chairman of the legislature in 1981.   

Since 1993, he represented all ethnic groups in the National Assembly.

Cuong's funeral is scheduled for Thursday. 


Tuesday - Mar 04, 1997 

Peterson approved by US Senate committee as ambassador to Vietnam

WASHINGTON (AFP) -- The Senate Foreign Relations Committee on 
Tuesday unanimously approved Douglas "Pete" Peterson, a former pilot
captured in the Vietnam war, as the first US ambassador to Hanoi.

   Peterson's nomination, which was announced February 27, must be
ratified by the full Senate in what is considered a rubber-stamp procedure. 

   Peterson was the 66th American taken prisoner of war (POW) during the 
bitter conflict that ended in communist victory in 1975 -- along with the
deaths of an estimated three million Vietnamese and nearly 60,000
Americans. 
   As an air force captain, he was flying a combat mission on September
10, 1966, when a North Vietnamese surface-to-air missile hit his Phantom jet.

   Spending six and a half years as a POW, he was held at three different
prisons, including the infamous "Hanoi Hilton," and he has said he was 
tortured.  

   He was released in 1973 and went into the computer business. He has
twice returned to Vietnam. 

   A Florida Democrat in the US House of Representatives between 1991 and
1995, Peterson played a key advisory role in President Bill Clinton's
decision in 1995 to normalize relations with Vietnam. Defending his decision at
the time, he said: "I don't live in the past." 
   Peterson has said that his top priority as ambassador would be
obtaining a full accounting from Vietnam for US personnel missing in action and
prisoners of war.
   "As full as possible accounting for our prisoners of war and missing
in action remains, in fact, America's highest priority," he said.