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VN news (Apr 1, 1997)
''Suicide'' report as Vietnamese composer and singer die
China prepares talks to end Vietnam oil dispute
Court urges wider probe into Vietnam's biggest corruption case
China could meet soon with Vietnam on martime row
Vietnam slams Russian document'' on U.S. POWS
Tuesday - Apr 01, 1997 ... Back to headlines
[INLINE] ''Suicide'' report as Vietnamese composer and singer die
Hanoi (dpa) - One of Vietnam's most popular romantic composers and
singers, Do Le, a Vietnamese-American who returned to his homeland
last year, has apparently committed suicide, it was reported Tuesday.
He was found in his apartment in the Co Giang district of Ho Chi Minh
City on March 24, Nguoi Lao Dong (Worker) newspaper reported, quoting
police as saying Le took an overdose of unspecified pills.
The paper said Le left a will mentioning his widow, a Vietnamese
national living in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania.
He left for the United States in September 1995 through the Orderly
Departure Programme (ODP), under which the United States accepts
Vietnamese associated with the former Washington-backed regime or who
have family members there already.
Best known as a composer of love songs popular throughout the country,
Le was also a highly regarded teacher for many of the most talented
new generation of Vietnamese singers in both Vietnam and the United
States.
Between 1992 and 1995 Le produced eight albums of love songs and music
for ballroom dancing, which until recently enjoyed wide popularity in
the former Saigon.
___________________________________
Tuesday - Apr 01, 1997 ... Back to headlines
[INLINE] China prepares talks to end Vietnam oil dispute
BEIJING (Reuter) - Beijing is preparing to begin negotiations with
Vietnam to help resolve a diplomatic row over the ownership of
oil-rich waters in the South China Sea, Chinese officials said on
Tuesday.
``China is currently preparing for expert-level talks with Vietnam,''
said Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman Shen Guofang.
The talks would focus on the sovereignty of seas off central Vietnam
where exploratory drilling by a Chinese rig has sparked verbal
sparring between Hanoi and its huge northern neighbour, said an
official of China's main offshore oil firm.
Disputes over territory and resource exploration in the South China
Sea continued to trouble Sino-Vietnamese relations, despite the steady
improvement in ties in recent years, Shen told a news briefing in
Beijing.
China and Vietnam fought a brief but bloody border war in 1979 and
clashed at sea in the 1980s, but Shen expressed confidence that
negotiations would ease the communist neighbours' current differences.
``We can resolve these problems through peaceful and friendly
consultations,'' he said.
Vietnamese Foreign Minister Nguyen Manh Cam said on Monday he hoped
talks with China could begin this week on claims to the area, about
64.5 nautical miles off its central coast, where China's Kan Tan III
rig has been drilling.
An official of the China National Offshore Oil Corp said negotiations
would be carried out by foreign affairs experts.
``The talks will focus on the division of the sea and will discuss who
owns that continential shelf and economic region,'' the official said.
Vietnam has repeatedly demanded that China withdraw its rig and
support vessels from the disputed area immediately, and has said it
wants talks to start as soon as possible.
China was expected to send an expert team to Vietnam this week to
discuss the issue, diplomats in Hanoi said.
A Chinese Foreign Ministry spokesman said last week that China
cherished its ties with Vietnam, but that the actions of the Kan Tan
III were beyond criticism.
``It is irreproachable for China's Kan Tan III rig to carry out normal
operations in the northern part of the South China Sea on China's
declared continental shelf and exclusive economic zone,'' spokesman
Cui Tiankai said.
Officials of the China National Offshore Oil Corp, which already
oversees exploitation of lucrative gas fields off the southern island
province of Hainan, have also said they have no immediate plans to
move the rig.
``Why should we leave the area?'' one official said last week. ``When
the exploration is finished we will move the rig.''
The oil exploration row is the latest in a long series of territorial
disputes, ideological differences and historical grievances to strain
Sino-Vietnamese socialist solidarity.
The two nations have competing claims on areas along their land
border, on parts of the Tonkin Gulf and on the Paracel Island chain,
which lie east of the latest area of dispute.
They are also among six regional claimants to the Spratly Islands
further to the south.
Both sides have in recent years agreed to shelve some border problems
and have worked hard to improve ties and boost border trade, but the
temptation to exploit the oil-rich waters they dispute has been a
constant threat to their rapprochement.
___________________________________
Tuesday - Apr 01, 1997 ... Back to headlines
[INLINE] Court urges wider probe into Vietnam's biggest corruption
case
Hanoi (AFP) - Vietnam newspapers Tuesday backed a court order for
further investigations into the country's biggest corruption scandal
after four defendants lost their appeal against the death penalty.
Late Monday, the Supreme People's Appeal Court of Ho Chi Minh City
upheld death sentences imposed on four people in the Tamexco trial,
and called for further investigations into the case in which more than
40 million dollars in state funds was misappropriated.
Pham Huy Phuoc, the former head of defunct trading company Tamexco,
was given the death penalty on January 31 for masterminding a web of
deceptive business practices that have ensnared a widening number of
officials.
At the end of the one-week appeal, the court instructed prosecution
officials to continue investigations into the widening case that has
implicated several senior state bank officials and deputy bank
governor Chu Van Nguyen.
During the appeal process, Phuoc named several other officials who had
accepted bribes and are likely to be investigated.
"I am not the only one responsible. There are many other reasons,
relating the law, (state) management mechanism and those who directly
managed me..." Phuoc said.
The Thanh Nien newspaper on Tuesday called for a deeper probe into the
case, saying the sentences were "just the tip of the iceberg."
Company executives Tran Quang Vinh and Le Minh Hai and public notary
Le Duc Canh were also sentenced to death while another 16 defendants
received prison sentences ranging from three years to life.
Hundreds of people have packed the court room each day and the trial
has been featured daily on television and in the press. The foreign
media were not allowed to attend.
The trial results were broadcast on international television on Monday
evening and splashed across Vietnam's daily newspapers on Tuesday.
Even though corruption is pervasive at all levels of Vietnam's
government, the enormous sums of money involved have outraged many
people in a country where the average annual income is just 250
dollars.
Phuoc bought his mistress a 200,000-dollar villa in Ho Chi Minh City
and is said to have gambled away company cars and hundreds of
thousands of dollars in cash. The court heard Phuoc is personally
linked to at least 27 million dollars in missing funds.
The appeals court also specified previously undisclosed fines. Phuoc
was told to repay Tamexco 7.5 million dollars, and together with
former vice general director of Bank for Foreign Trade of Vietnam
(Vietcombank) Nguyen Duc Lo, 2.2 million dollars to Vietcombank.
Phuoc and another bank official must also compensate Firstvina Bank
10.7 million dollars.
___________________________________
Tuesday - Apr 01, 1997 ... Back to headlines
[INLINE] China could meet soon with Vietnam on martime row
BEIJING (AFP) - China and Vietnam could meet within months to discuss
the maritime dispute triggered by a Chinese oil rig outside the Gulf
of Tonkin, a Chinese foreign ministry spokesman said Tuesday.
"The discussions could open quickly, probably before the summer,"
spokesman Shen Guofang told a press conference.
"Relations between Vietnam and China have greatly improved in recent
times but we still have problems to resolve like maritime borders and
the exploitation of oil resources," said Shen.
"We will be aiming to solve these problems through dialogue," he said.
A Vietnamese official told AFP Monday in Hanoi who said discussions
would start as soon as possible in Vietnam.
The oil dispute flared on March 7 when a Chinese oil rig moved into
the contested area prompting Hanoi to demand China cease exploration
and move the rig.
Vietnam and China both lay claim to a potentially gas rich area which
lies 64.5 nautical miles from Vietnam's coast and 71 nautical miles
from China's island of Hainan.
Vietnam has attempted to obtain international support in the dispute,
notably from its six partners in the Association of South East Asian
nations (ASEAN).
___________________________________
Tuesday - Apr 01, 1997 ... Back to headlines
[INLINE] Vietnam slams Russian document'' on U.S. POWS
Hanoi (Reuter) - Vietnam took a swipe on Tuesday at an old Soviet
intelligence report that suggested Hanoi held hundreds more U.S.
prisoners of war (POWs) than it acknowledged in the early 1970s.
``Vietnam rejected as flatly slanderous and ill-intentioned the
so-called 'Russian Document' on POW and MIA (missing in action),'' the
official news agency quoted the head of the Vietnam Association of War
Veterans, Tran Van Quang, as saying.
It said Quang made his comment at a meeting with the Charge d'Affaires
of the U.S. embassy in Hanoi, Desaix Anderson, who confirmed that
Washington considered the report null and void.
The issue of POWs and accounting for some 1,600 U.S. servicemen still
listed as missing in action or otherwise unaccounted for in Vietnam
has been a delicate one in the process of normalising relations
between the two former enemies.
One diplomat, who declined to be named, said he believed anti-Hanoi
hardliners in the United States were peddling old and discredited
reports on POWs to block an exchange of ambassadors.
``This issue is about to hit the press again and people who are
outside the system are going to get ready to state their position
again,'' he said.
Republican Leader Trent Lott has said he intends to bring up the
long-delayed confirmation of former congressman Douglas ``Pete''
Peterson as ambassador to Vietnam in the Senate on April 8 or 9.
The nomination has been held up by Republican Senator Bob Smith of New
Hampshire since it cleared the Senate Foreign Relations Committee on
March 4.
Smith had said it was premature to send an ambassador to Hanoi while
investigations continued into whether U.S. policy towards Vietnam had
been influenced by illegal contributions to President Bill Clinton's
election campaign last year.
Long a critic of Vietnam's efforts to account for Americans lost in
action in the Vietnam War, Smith has said he would do everything he
could to block the nomination.
An official in Hanoi with the Joint Task Force for Full Accounting,
which is in charge of efforts to trace MIAs, said the United States
accepted that there was no credible evidence in three Soviet
intelligence reports on war-era prisoners.
Two of those reports suggested that Vietnam held hundreds more
prisoners than it had acknowledged, first in 1970-71 and then in 1972.
It was not clear to which ``Russian document'' the veteran
association's Quang was referring.
Hanoi released 591 prisoners in ``Operation Homecoming'' after U.S.
forces withdrew from Vietnam in 1973 and has stated since that they
were all it held.