VN News (Mar. 24-25, 1997)

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

Mar 25: Vietnamese police bust dog-snatching operation 
Mar 25: Vietnamese executives arrested over giant corruption case
Mar 25: China Studying Vietnam Offshore Dispute: Govt. Spokesman 
Mar 25: Vietnam Through Rose-Tinted Glasses: Analysis
Mar 24: Boat People Return to Vietnam
Mar 24: Vietnam hears appeals in blockbuster graft case 
Mar 24: Vietnam turns up the heat in China oil row
Mar 24: Vietnam seeks prompt talks with China over maritime dispute 
Mar 24: Vietnamese judge caught with opium stash evades police: report
Mar 24: Appeal trial of Vietnam's biggest corruption scandal begins
Mar 24: Uncommon Valor Former POW Petr Peterson prepares for a return 
        to Vietnam as the first postwar U.S. Ambassador



Tuesday - Mar 25, 1997 

Vietnamese police bust dog-snatching operation 

Hanoi (dpa) -  Vietnamese police have arrested a man who hired children
and the unemployed to steal dogs from the streets of southern Ho Chi
Minh City both for resale to new pet owners and for eating, according to
a local report Tuesday.   

Pham Cong Quan, 52, was found with 512 dogs on the grounds of his home
on the outskirts of the country's largest city.

Sleepless neighbours alerted police to the noisy canine colony,
reported the Nguoi Lao Dong (Worker) newspaper.   

Quan, who previously worked at a dog meat restaurant, confessed that
he operated his dog-snatching operation for about a year.   

Nicer dogs were resold as house pets, while less desirable mutts were
sold to local restuarants or to traders who would truck them up to
China, where dogs are also regarded as a delicacy.   

Police said that Quan would be subject to various administrative
fines. Since his arrest last Tuesday police have managed to reunite 109
dogs with their original owners, the newspaper added. 

Tuesday - Mar 25, 1997

Vietnamese executives arrested over giant corruption case

HANOI (AFP) - Ho Chi Minh City police have
arrested two executives of two companies allegedly involved
in a corruption scandal that could involve debts worth up
to 200 million dollars, sources said Tuesday.

Tang Minh Phung, director of Minh Phung Export Garment Co
Ltd and Lien Khui Thin, director general of EPCO Import
Export Company were arrested on Monday on corruption
charges, police said.

Documents said the two were apprehended for "abusing
confidence to appropriate socialist properties," police
said.

Both companies are private concerns believed to have
defaulted on letters of credit to foreign and domestic
banks. 

"In terms of a potential banking crisis this is serious,"
said a Vietnamese businessman and part owner of a
joint-stock bank in Ho Chi Minh City. 

"This has the potential to be ten times as big as Tamexco,"
he said, referring to a notorious corruption case involving
losses of 40 million dollars at a state-owned trading
company. Four people were later condemned to death. 

Minh Phung is one of Vietnam's largest garment
manufacturers with more than 9,000 employees. EPCO trades
aquaculture products and imported fertilizer.

Sources said the two companies had defaulted on letters of
credit to foreign and state owned banks.

Police refused to supply details on the amount of money
involved. Attempts to contact officials at both companies
refused to answer telephone calls. 


Tuesday - Mar 25, 1997

China Studying Vietnam Offshore Dispute: Govt. Spokesman

BEIJING (DJ) -- China favors a peaceful resolution to an ongoing squabble with
Vietnam over offshore petroleum rights, but is still mulling the next step it 
will take, an official government spokesman said Tuesday.

'We are studying the issue,' said Foreign Ministry spokesman Cui Tiankai
when asked if China would engage in discussions with Vietnam about offshore 
exploratory activities in an area of the South China Sea midway between the 
two countries.

He emphasized China always adheres to a policy of 'peaceful negotiation' to
settle international disputes. He was speaking to reporters at a regular
twice-a-week news conference.</p>
As reported, a Chinese oil rig called Kantan-03 and two tugboats entered the
waters Hanoi calls Block 113, off the northern coast of Vietnam, on March 7.</p>
Both countries say the offshore site is within their territorial waters and
China has so far refused Vietnamese demands that Kantan-03 leave the area.

Tuesday - Mar 25, 1997

Vietnam Through Rose-Tinted Glasses 

By QUAN NGUYEN

When Douglas "Pete" Peterson arrives in Hanoi next month, he will fill a
hole left when America's last ambassador, Graham Martin, was forced to flee
from the embassy rooftop in 1975 ahead of advancing Communist troops.

For the United States, it will launch a new era. Mr. Peterson will set
up residence in Hanoi, the capital of America's erstwhile enemy, rather
than in Saigon, the seat of power of the U.S. wartime ally. For Mr.
Peterson, a former U.S. fighter pilot who spent nearly seven years as a
prisoner of war, it will be something of a homecoming. What, if anything,
it will mean for the people of Vietnam is yet unclear.

The best thing that Mr. Peterson could bring both sides is a healthy
dose of realism. For almost a half century now, Vietnam has played host to
a series of Americans who have seen Vietnam as the country they wanted to
see, not as the one actually before them. "I never knew a man who had
better motives for all the trouble he caused," wrote Graham Greene of his
protagonist in "The Quiet American," in a phrase meant to sum up the
Americans. Greene's quote, of course, could be said today to apply equally
to the hordes of investors with rose-tinted glasses who insist on seeing
Vietnam as the latest "emerging market." In the past the consequences of
this muddled vision have been tragic for both peoples.

Clearly Vietnam's leaders today face immense challenges today they could
scarcely have imagined only a few years ago. Back in 1975, when a
Soviet-made tank crashed through the gates of the presidential palace in
Saigon, the newly united Vietnam seemed an affirmation of history. Yet
history has had the last laugh. Despite the much-heralded economic growth
of the past decade, victory in wars against three foreign powers (the
French, the Americans, and the Chinese) and its recent admission to the
Association of Southeast Asian Nations, Vietnam remains one of the poorest
nations on earth. The rest of Asia has long since passed the Vietnamese by,
and with the Berlin Wall now down, the statues of Lenin overlooking Hanoi's
parks seem more pathetic than menacing. The one Communist power remaining
in the region, China, has shown itself less a fraternal brother than a
strategic threat.


Undeniably, the Vietnamese are trying to shake off the noose of the
Marxist-driven economy now strangling the country. The government today is
like an able-bodied drug addict: His head is empty of goals and ideas; he
lives for the sake of existence. Vietnam's recent openings of its market to
international commerce reflects this instinct to survive. By partially
introducing capitalism into its veins, the Party hopes to keep itself
alive.

In the immediate future, Hanoi's leaders may well make up for their lack
of funds by turning to the World Bank and investors abroad. To make up for
their lack of technology, they can turn to imports. However, if they really
wish to be a part of a future prosperous and secure Vietnam, they must
begin first to care for their own people, and above all to create an
environment where everyone, regardless of political affiliation, religion
or background, can contribute to the development of Vietnam. Vietnamese and
Americans alike have reason to hope that this is one U.S. ambassador who
understands the government he is dealing with.

Dr. Nguyen, a member of the Nonviolent Movement for Human Rights in
Vietnam, lives in Annandale, Virginia.

Monday - Mar 24, 1997

Boat People Return to Vietnam 

By IAN STEWART 

ABOARD VIETNAM AIRLINES FLIGHT 7911 (AP) -- She gambled
everything to escape Vietnam nine years ago: home, family, dignity.
In the end, she lost it all.

At Hong Kong's Kai Tak airport, Nguyen Thi Hien said goodbye to
nine years behind barbed wire and climbed aboard Vietnam Airlines
charter flight 7911 to Vietnam.

She, her husband, Hoang Duc Hung, and their three children were
among the last of the boat people whose saga gripped the world's
attention in the 1970s and 1980s.

Now, having finally surrendered to the reality that no other
country wanted them, they were getting onto an airplane for the
first time in their lives, and going home with less than they
started with.

Convinced almost to the last that the family would get asylum,
Hien had given most of their belongings to other families who chose
to return months ago.

``We packed up everything we had in the camp, but there's not
much. We don't have much left,'' said Hien as she grappled with the
mysteries of the seat belt during Friday's flight.

Hien is 34, a short woman with sad, down-turned eyes, whose
odyssey began in February 1988 when her husband, a ship welder, was
out of work and Vietnam's communist economy was sinking.

They sold their home for $450 worth of gold, enough to buy the
family passage on a leaky fishing boat along with 60 other people.

Her in-laws vowed to disown them if they left, and they haven't
been heard from since the family set off from a beach just north of
their hometown of Haiphong.

``I don't know what they're going to do when we get back,'' Hien
said. ``It's very sad. Everything is gone now. But we had to go
back.''

After drifting through the South China Sea, the overburdened
boat broke up just off a Chinese beach. For six months they lived
on the beach, begging Chinese fishermen for money, food and passage
to Hong Kong.

The next nine years were spent in the Whitehead Detention
Center, one family among thousands waiting, filling out forms,
answering questions, seesawing between hope and despair, finally
opting for ``voluntary repatriation'' and a U.N. cash grant worth
$400.

Cabin attendants, accustomed after 279 U.N. repatriation flights
to dealing with first-time fliers, handed out extra air sickness
bags as the Airbus and its 120 home-bound boat people taxied toward
the runway.

At liftoff, Hien got her first and probably last glimpse of Hong
Kong's glittering skyscrapers, a world apart from the squalor she
was used to.

The Vietnamese had never been welcome in Hong Kong. As their
number grew to 60,000, the clamor went up to get rid of them. They
were viewed as a burden on the taxpayer, the fallout from a crisis
not of Hong Kong's making.

Now only 6,000 are left, and Hong Kong aims to be rid of them
before China takes over the British colony on July 1.

Hien sank into her seat and closed her eyes. Tears rolled down
the cheeks of her youngest son, Hoang Doanh, who was born in
Whitehead. His father cradled the 2-year-old in his arms and fed
him milk.

Watching her children grow up in the drab, spartan camp was
tough on Hien. When Hoang Thi Thao, 13, and Hoang Thin, 11, were
asked to write an essay on wildlife, they didn't know what a water
buffalo was, or where birds fly to.

``They'd only seen the birds fly above the camp,'' Hien said.
``They didn't know they landed. They only knew they flew away.''

During the two-hour flight, she gave voice to her misgivings:
Where would they live? Find work? How would their family receive
them?

Vietnam guarantees that returning boat people will not be
punished. But those who left to find better job prospects are often
perceived at home as opportunists who deserted Vietnam in its
darkest hour.

``We don't care when they left, or care why. If they don't act
against the government, they are most welcome to return,'' Pham
Khac Lam, vice-chairman of the National Committee for Overseas
Vietnamese, said in a recent interview.

For part of the flight, the cabin was filled with excited
chatter and the sheer thrill of flying. But as the plane descended
toward Hanoi and sparkling rice paddies came into view, the
passengers fell silent.

On the ground, unsmiling immigration and customs officers
processed the returnees back into Vietnam and put them on buses to
relocation camps in Hanoi, where they stayed for a few days before
moving to their home towns.

Inside the shabby terminal, Hien blended into a sea of confused
people having one form after another shoved at them.

Holding little Doanh in one hand and a small canvas bag in the
other, she pushed deeper into the crowd. Her red-and-black jacket
popped briefly into view once more, and then she was gone.

Monday - Mar 24, 1997

Vietnam hears appeals in blockbuster graft case 

Ho Chi Minh City (Reuter) - Vietnamese courts began hearing appeals in the 
nation's biggest graft case on Monday, a process analysts said could uncover
new details in a scandal that has rattled Vietnam's political establishment.

State-controlled newspapers said 59 people had been summoned to give evidence 
at the court in this southern city over the next week, including senior local
government officials and a deputy governor of the central State Bank of Vietnam.

The scandal involving Tamexco, a Ho Chi Minh City trading firm affiliated with
the ruling Communist Party, sent shockwaves through Vietnamese politics when 
it first came to court earlier this year.

Vietnam's normally timid state media carried lurid details, of the case, in 
which Tamexco executives and state officials were accused of looting the 
company of millions of dollars.

Many of the defendants have links to some of the most powerful figures in the 
country.

During the initial trial, both state prosecutors and the defence called for
investigators to probe the case further. Analysts said this week's appeals 
hearings might provide the outlet for new details to emerge.

The chief defendant in the trial is Pham Huy Phuoc, Tamexco's former director, 
who was charged with siphoning off some $26 million of state money. He was
accused of using some of it to buy a swanky villa for his mistress and
gambling away tens of thousands of dollars in one card game.

The appeal hearings, like the trial, were closed to foreign journalists.

Dozens of people sat outside the court, a grand French colonial-style building
in the heart of Ho Chi Minh City, listening intently to the hearings on a 
loudspeaker.

Of the 20 people originally sentenced, four face the death penalty, while
most of the rest were handed lengthy prison terms. Fifteen people are 
appealing their sentences.

Under Vietnam's judicial system, appeals cases are rarely successful. 
Defendants facing the death penalty have the final option of seeking 
a presidential pardon if an appeal fails.

Newspapers reported ahead of the appeal that the prosecution would be seeking 
even harsher sentences for those that were handed prison terms the first 
time around.

Monday - Mar 24, 1997

Vietnam turns up the heat in China oil row

By Adrian Edwards 

HANOI  (Reuter) - Vietnam's communist government
turned up the heat in a territorial and oil exploration row with
its giant northern neighbour on Monday, accusing China of
violating international laws and calling for urgent talks.

Amid signs of growing official frustration, a foreign
ministry spokesman in Hanoi said China's decision to position an
oil rig off Vietnam's central coast in early March could not be
left to routine border discussion channels.

He said Vietnam was calling therefore for an immediate and
unconditional meeting.

``We request an expert-level meeting at the soonest moment
without preconditions to discuss the issue,'' the spokesman
said, reading from a prepared statement.

``Using this opportunity, we would like to add that the
location (of the drilling rig) is not in the Tonkin Gulf area,''
he said, indicating that in Hanoi's view the matter fell outside
existing channels for discussing routine border issues.

The official Vietnam News Agency quoted a prominent lawyer
earlier as saying latest reports showed the Chinese vessels were
located 55 nautical miles off the nearest point of Vietnam's
base line and 71 miles off China's Hainan Island.

``The rig is definitely inside Vietnam's exclusive economic
zone and continental shelf,'' VNA quoted the lawyer, Luu Van
Loi, as saying.

He added that China's action placed it in violation of its
obligations under a 1982 U.N. Convention on Sea Law and called
for the immediate withdrawal of the rig and supporting vessels.

The dispute erupted earlier this month when Hanoi announced
it had protested to China over the positioning of the Kan Tan
111 exploration rig some 64.5 nautical miles off mainland
central Vietnam.

Beijing responded that the rig was in Chinese waters off
Hainan Island and that its activities were above reproach.

Vietnam in turn has counter-responded by seeking diplomatic
support from fellow members of the Association of Southeast
Asian Nations and using megaphone diplomacy, apparently as a
means of increasing pressure on China for early negotiations.

But a senior official with state oil firm Petrovietnam
indicated growing frustration with the matter on Monday and said
Hanoi would not consider a solution that involved a
production-sharing agreement with Beijing.

``Vietnam would never sign a contract on production-sharing
with China on its continental shelf,'' Petrovietnam information
centre director Vu Van Mao told reporters at an oil and gas
conference in Ho Chi Minh City.

``If someone came to your country and drilled, and then
asked you to sign a contract, would you?''

Mao added there could be no comparison made with overlapping
maritime areas off Vietnam's southern coast, where sharing deals
have been set up with neighbouring countries.

Vietnamese analysts contacted by Reuters on Monday indicated
similar frustration and said Beijing's outward silence over the
issue in recent days reflected the weakness of its claim to the
disputed area.

``Until now China has said 'Why are you responding like this
when you didn't respond to incidents like this on previous
occasions','' said a senior Hanoi academic. ``They abuse our
patience.''

Monday - Mar 24, 1997 

Vietnam seeks prompt talks with China over maritime dispute

by Frederik Balfour

HANOI  (AFP) - Vietnam is seeking prompt talks
with China on their latest dispute on the South China Sea,
a foreign ministry spokesman said on Monday. 

The ministry issued a statement in response to questions
from reporters saying "the issue should be addressed at the
earliest moment." 

"We suggest the two countries' experts meet at an earliest
time at any place to discuss this matter," it said.

An official from the foreign affairs ministry department of
international law and treaties told AFP his team was eager
to talk. 

"We are ready to talk anywhere. If they agree and we have
to go to China, then we will go. We are ready," he said.

Vietnam and China both lay claim to the potentially gas
rich area which lies 64.5 nautical miles (119 kilometres)
from Vietnam's coast and 71 nautical miles (130 kilometres)
from China's Hainan Island.

But a PetroVietnam executive on Monday said he ruled out
any possibility of joint exploration in the area, a move
analysts said is tantamount to backing off claims of
sovereignty.

Meanwhile the Association of Southeast Asian Nations
(ASEAN) will throw its support behind Vietnam in its latest
maritime dispute with China at a high level ASEAN-China
meeting next month, ASEAN diplomats said. 

"Automatically ASEAN will support Vietnam. It's all for one
and one for all," an ASEAN ambassador here said over the
weekend.

ASEAN wants to put the issue on the agenda for the upcoming
ASEAN-China Cooperative Meeting set for April 17-19 in
China, he said. 

Although ASEAN's charter dictates member countries settle
their territorial disputes with non-ASEAN countries
bilaterally, the regional grouping is wary of allowing
China's maritime claim to go unchallenged. 

"It's common sense (we will support Vietnam). China is like
a huge ox with a long tongue reaching all the way to the
southern tip of the South China Sea," the ambassador said. 

Another ASEAN ambassador added: "I told my government we
should try to persuade China to agree to talks. I suggested
we do this either bilaterally or in the context of the
ASEAN-China meeting next month." 

The latest territorial row between Hanoi and Beijing was
triggered on March 7 when a Chinese oil rig moved into the
contested area prompting Hanoi to demand China cease
exploration and move the rig. 

On March 20 Hanoi repeated its demands and told ambassadors
it would request a special, expert-level meeting with China
to resolve the dispute. 

So far Bejing has made no official response to Hanoi's
request for talks, and one ASEAN ambassador who tried to
contact his Chinese counterpart here said he refused to
discuss the issue.

However, a Chinese military source in Hanoi intimated over
the weekend that Beijing might be open to dialogue. 

"The Chinese party reaffirms its claims of sovereignty, but
the two parties should solve this problem by peaceful
negotiations and base them on peaceful relations with their
neighbours," he said. 

Analysts say strong nationalist sentiments in both capitals
preclude any possibility of either side backing down.

But unlike past clashes in the South China Sea over the
Spratly or Paracel islands, the latest dispute between
Bejing and Hanoi is based on the strong potential of
commercially exploitable gas.

"Vietnam needs energy to power itself into the lowest rung
of ASEAN and they want to stake out as big a prospective
acerage as they can," said Al Troner, managing director of
Asia Pacific Energy Consulting, an independent Kuala
Lumpur-based concern. 

"In 1994 China became a net importer of oil. This adds
urgency and shows why they are less willing to comprise,"
he said. 

Vietnam and China have been negotiating since 1991 on land
boundaries, joint claims over the Gulf of Tonkin separating
Vietnam's northeast coast from the southern tip of China
and Hainan Island, and overlapping claims to the Spratly
Islands and the Paracel Islands.

However, no existing mechanism for talks cover the
contested area, which Vietnamese seismic maps list as block
113. 

It lies about 54 nautical miles (98 kilometres) beyond the
southernmost boundary of the Gulf of Tonkin, 164 nautical
miles (298 kilometres) northeast of the Paracels, and 530
nautical miles, (960 kilometres) from the Spratlys. 

Monday - Mar 24, 1997 

Vietnamese judge caught with opium stash evades police: report 

HANOI (AFP) - A magistrate from a people's court
of a central Vietnamese province has fled after he was
caught carrying more than six kilogrammes of opium, a
newspaper report said Monday. 

Mua Nenh Thong, the presiding judge of the People's Court
of Ky Son district in Nghe An province fled from police
after he was caught carrying 6.2 kilograms (13.64 pounds)
in his bag, the Tin Tuc Buoi Chieu daily reported. 

Thong is being sought by the police.

Monday - Mar 24, 1997

Appeal trial of Vietnam's biggest corruption scandal begins

HANOI (AFP) - Four people sentenced to death in
Vietnam's biggest corruption scandal began their appeal
Monday in Ho Chi Minh City, a court official said. 

Fifteen people in all, including the four condemned to
death began their appeal in the Tamexco trial, in which
more than 40 million dollars was misappropriated. 

Pham Huy Phuoc, the former head of Tamexco, a state-owned
trading company, was sentenced to death on January 31 for
masterminding a web of deceptive business practices
resulting in the losses. 

Three other company executives, Tran Quang Vinh, Le Minh
Hai and public notary Le Duc Canh, were also sentenced to
death while another 16 defendants received sentences
ranging from life in jail to three years in jail suspended.

Twelve of the 16, including four senior banking officials
are also appealing their prison sentences in the Ho Chi
Minh City People's Supreme Court in a hearing expected to
last one week.

All 20 convicted in the first trial held in January must
appear in the appeal court together with 28 lawyers, the
official said.

A deputy vice governor of Vietnam's central bank and a
number of senior officials from municipal authorities were
also summoned to the appeal trial, he said.  

Monday - Mar 24, 1997 

Uncommon Valor Former POW Petr Peterson prepares for a 
return to Vietnam as the first postwar U.S. Ambassador 

By THOMAS FIELDSMEYER & SANDRA McELWAINE in Washington and DON SIDER in Florida


As a prisoner of war, he hadn't worn shoes in more than six years.
Clothed in nothing but pajamas, he had endured merciless torture and
ridicule and come close to starvation. Then late one night in March
1973, his North  Vietnamese captors arrived with a denim shirt,
trousers and a pair of ill-fitting shoes. The next morning he was
put on a plane and flown home to freedom. "Obviously, I built up a
lot of hate," says Pete Peterson of those years as a POW. "But when
I walked out of there, I realized that was futile."

Rather than dwell on the hellish experience, he plunged
enthusiastically into a new life--as a family man, a teen counselor
and eventually a congressman. Now Peterson, 61, takes on his biggest
challenge. The Senate is soon expected to confirm him as the
nation's first ambassador to postwar  Vietnam. Despite all he endured
at the hands of the North  Vietnamese, Peterson relishes the post's
possibilities. "We all have to work with them and see them not as a
war but as a country," he says. "I think maybe I can be the
bridge."

Such an attitude would have been unthinkable three decades ago, as
Captain Peterson sat wasting in prison. He and fellow airman Bernard
Talley had set out from Thailand in their F-4 Phantom on the night of
Sept. 10, 1966, with orders to bomb railroad yards near  Hanoi. Just
after Peterson dropped a flare to light his target, a missile struck
and he and Talley ejected. Peterson landed in a tree, unconscious,
with a broken right arm, shoulder and leg. His captors paraded him
through villages of screaming, rock-throwing crowds. "It was pretty
close to a lynching," he says.

One of 3,000 captives in the notorious Hanoi Hilton, Peterson
endured seemingly endless rounds of interrogation and torture. "I
was out of my mind for a while," he says. Yet Peterson stubbornly
resisted providing any information his captors could use. "You'd
give them crazy things, and they'd give you a reprieve to regain your
strength," he says. "Then they'd come back and do it again."
Surviving on insects and contaminated water, he meditated and spent
months on imaginary projects like building a house. "We did a lot of
praying," says Peterson, a Catholic, "and got very serious about
it."

Born the ninth of 10 children of a U.S. Postal Service mechanic
and his homemaker wife, Peterson grew up in Omaha and later in small
towns in Missouri and Iowa before dropping out of college to join the
Air Force in 1954. He met Carlotta Neal, a flight dispatcher in
Marianna, Fla., when he did his pilot training, and they married in
1956. When Peterson left for Southeast Asia 10 years later, Carlotta
was eight months pregnant with son Douglas and caring for Mike, then
8, and Paula, 7. After Peterson's capture, she had no word of him for
more than three years until she spotted him in propaganda footage on
a December 1969 newscast. She traveled to  Vietnam and Laos to speak
out for POWs but didn't see him again until the war ended and he was
finally released.

"Getting back was a twilight zone," Peterson says. "We didn't
want to sleep. We wanted to make up time. That's still a problem.
I feel I'm making up time." Retiring from the Air Force in 1981, he
moved his family to Tampa, where he started a small construction
business. But tragedy struck in 1983, when Douglas, 17, was killed
in an auto accident. "It was a devastating blow," Peterson says,
"worse than prison."

Traumatized, the family moved back to Marianna, Carlotta's
hometown, where Peterson and a partner launched a computer business,
and in 1985 he became director of a treatment program for hard-core
teen offenders. "I had been in prison," he says. "I knew what being
locked up meant." Partially because of his experience, his effect on
the boys was "enormous," says Wally Kennedy, a psychologist with the
program: "When they could get the respect of somebody like him, it
made them feel better about themselves."

In 1990, despite his lack of political experience, Peterson ran
for Congress as a moderate Democrat. "I wanted to test if someone
could come off the street and win," he says. The answer was yes, and
he easily won three straight terms. But in 1995, Carlotta died of
breast cancer and Peterson, weary of the increasingly partisan
atmosphere in Washington, chose not to run again. Now, after two
trips back to  Vietnam, he is ready to tackle the controversial issues
surrounding his new post, including the possibility that any fellow
POWs or MIAs remain alive. "The chances," he concedes, "are very
low." As for himself, he has made peace with the past. "Being a POW
is not my thing," Peterson says. "I finished with that when I came
home. I want to be judged on the future."