VN News (Apr 5-6) (1)

[Dam Son <son@fermi.phys.washington.edu>]

US treasury chief pledges help to Vietnam 
US Treasury Secretary Rubin arrives in Hanoi for debt accord signing 
"Vietnam Syndrome'' targeted in Rubin visit to Hanoi
Tamexco scandal should teach a lesson: communist party chief
Hanoi sets up commission for new trans-Vietnamese highway 
Muoi hails tight control as answer to Vietnam woes 
Vietnam: Hailstorm Destroys Homes, Rice Crops In North


US treasury chief pledges help to Vietnam 

HANOI (Reuter) - U.S. Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin said Sunday that
America was ready to help former wartime foe Vietnam down the long
road toward creating a modern economy.

``We have a real interest in seeing Vietnam be successful,'' he told
reporters in Hanoi. ``It's a bigger market for us.''

Rubin, who arrived Sunday after attending a meeting of Asia-Pacific
finance ministers in the Philippines, is the highest ranking U.S.
economic official to visit the communist country since the end of the
Vietnam War in 1975.

His arrival comes as the country's government is facing the most
serious test yet of its 11-year-old economic reform program, with
troubles looming in the banking industry and the state sector.

``The country has done quite a lot of reforms,'' Rubin said, but he
added, ``Right now it looks like there is an awful lot they need to do
if they are going to have sustained success over the long run.''

Rubin said the United States wanted to do what it could to help
Vietnam help itself, adding that in the process U.S. companies could
benefit. Many foreigh companies seem to have come to Vietnam with a
lot of enthusiasm but have since run into problems, he noted.

Speaking in Washington last week before setting off on a six-day trip
to Asia, Rubin said he hoped his visit would provide a ``fresh start''
to economic relations between the two former wartime foes.

He is slated Monday to sign a $145 million debt rescheduling agreement
with Vietnamese Finance Minister Nguyen Sinh Hung.

Under the pact, Hanoi agreed to pay back debts run up by South Vietnam
to buy grain and build roads and power stations before the former U.S.
ally was conquered by the communist North in 1975.

``Conclusion of this financial agreement ... gives an important aspect
of our relationship a fresh start,'' Rubin said.

Rubin, who will also meet Prime Minister Vo Van Kiet Monday, said
Vietnam's commitment to resume regular debt repayments to the United
States was a necessary step toward it getting new loans from the U.S.
Export-Import Bank and other U.S. government credit programs.

Vietnam is also anxious to reach a trade agreement with the United
States that would give it most favored nation (MFN) trading
privileges.

MFN, which guarantees non-discriminatory tariff rates on exports to
the United States, would make Vietnamese textile makers and other
goods manufacturers more competitive in the huge American market.

In order to strike a trade agreement, Hanoi must be willing to promise
to substantially open up its markets and treat U.S. companies
operating in Vietnam the same way it does local businesses, Rubin
said.

Such reforms ``could provide the impetus for Vietnam's emergence as
the next Asian tiger,'' he added, in a reference to high-growth Asian
economies like Hong Kong, Taiwan and South Korea.

Rubin winds up his trip to Asia Tuesday after a visit to Ho Chi Minh
City, the former South Vietnamese capital, Saigon.
  ___________________________________

US Treasury Secretary Rubin arrives in Hanoi for debt accord
signing

HANOI (AFP) - US Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin arrived in Hanoi late
Sunday to sign a deal in which Vietnam will assume nearly 145 million
dollars worth of debt amassed by the former Saigon regime, a US
government official said.

Rubin was expected to have dinner with his Vietnamese counterpart
finance minister Nguyen Sinh Hung with whom he is expected to sign a
debt rescheduling agreement on Monday morning, the aide said.

The deal, which comes nearly 22 years after the end of the Vietnam War
on April 30 1975, will remove one of the few remaining obstacles to
the two countries establishing a trade agreement, sources said.

Rubin will also hold meetings with Vietnamese Prime Minister Vo Van
Kiet in Hanoi on Monday morning, and is expected to meet with Cao Si
Kiem, the State Bank governor.

He will fly to Ho Chi Minh City on Monday afternoon, and is expected
to have talks on Tuesday morning with Communist Party general
secretary Do Muoi before flying back to Washington.
  ___________________________________

"Vietnam Syndrome'' targeted in Rubin visit to Hanoi

Hanoi (Reuter) - U.S. Treasury Secretary Robert Rubin was scheduled to
arrive in Vietnam late on Sunday beginning a visit focussed on
economic links in a relationship still scarred from a war that ended a
generation ago.

Rubin's trip, beginning in Hanoi and taking in Ho Chi Minh City, was
due to mark the most senior-level visit by a U.S. economic official
since the fall of South Vietnam 22 years ago this month.

But diplomats indicated his arrival was less about marking history
than in overcoming a relationship that remains dominated by a
continuing ``Vietnam Syndrome'' nearly two years after diplomatic ties
were normalised.

The term, used originally to refer to the psychological trauma of war
combatants, is also used commonly in Hanoi to mean a perceived
tendency among Americans to see Vietnam as a war rather than a country
seeking to open its doors to the world.

``It (the visit) is a symbol of a desire for broadened and deepened
economic engagement,'' said Desaix Anderson, the U.S. Charge
d'Affaires in Hanoi.

``We're very interested in the economic relationship,'' he added.
``It's a good time to show up on a senior level.''

Rubin is expected to sign a deal on Monday to reschedule some $145
million in debt given by Washington to the government of wartime South
Vietnam.

Responsibility for the defeated government's humanitarian and
development loans debt was transferred to Hanoi after the war ended in
1975.

He is also expected to urge Hanoi to accelerate its decade-old
economic reform process and promote policies that encourage trade
liberalisation.

But Rubin's trip is also part of the sometimes painstaking process of
mending relations, which foreign affairs analysts see as being further
complicated by strategic and other factors in one of the fastest
developing regions of the world.

Since the fanfare of August 1995 when then-Secretary of State Warren
Christopher marked diplomatic normalisation by opening an embassy in
Hanoi, progress towards a commercial trade agreement and other key
goals has been slow.

Earlier this year U.S.-funded radio station Radio Free Asia began
beaming broadcasts into Indochina in Vietnamese, sparking verbal
outrage in Vietnam's state-controlled media.

Delays over the appointment of a U.S. ambassador to Vietnam and
criticism of Hanoi's human rights record have also caused anger among
officials, some of whom remain suspicious that Washington is seeking
to gain in peace where it lost in war.

Rubin's two day schedule includes a visit to a school in Ho Chi Minh
City, formerly Saigon, an appearance at a seminar on trade relations,
and a visit to the U.S. office in Hanoi for operations to account for
missing American servicemen.

Vietnamese analysts said they expected no major breakthroughs during
the trip, but added it was nonetheless viewed as a step in the process
of mending ties between what one described as ``a relationship between
a superpower and a dwarf.''
  ___________________________________

Tamexco scandal should teach a lesson: communist party chief

Hanoi (AFP) - Vietnam's Tamexco scandal, which led to the country's
largest graft trial yet, should serve as a lesson in the drive against
corruption, Communist Party leader Do Muoi was quoted Saturday as
saying.

"If state control was strictly tightened, no cases like that would
ever be seen," the secretary-general reportedly said this week on the
sidelines of the plenary session of the National Assembly.

Three company executives and a public notary were sentenced to death
in January for diverting more than 40 million dollars from Tamexco, a
party-affiliated import-export company in southern Ho Chi Minh City.

An appeals court upheld the sentences last Monday.

The Tamexco case laid bare a network of corruption plaguing Vietnam's
banking system, including city officials and a number of private
companies.

"(We must) rectify management mistakes which have caused great losses
of public property as well as ensure effectiveness of the on-going
anti-corruption drive," Do was quoted as saying by the Vietnam News
daily.

Prime Minister Vo Van Kiet also told foreign journalists that it was
time to "insist more on action, words," in the fight against
corruption.
  ___________________________________

Hanoi sets up commission for new trans-Vietnamese highway

Hanoi (AFP) - Hanoi has set up a commission to oversee the
construction of Vietnam's second main road artery linking the north to
the south of the country, a report said Saturday.

The first of the Southeast Asian country's major infrastructure
projects will be completed through a mass moblisation of Vietnamese
workers.

The 12-member road commission is headed by Prime Minsiter Vo Van Kiet
and which includes several ministers.

"This is a major project which will use the labour of milllions of
people," Kiet was Saturday quoted as saying by the daily Vietnam News.

The "Truong Son" highway will be built parallel to the existing main
road which runs along the country's coast and is exposed to floods and
typhoons.

The new 1,800-kilometer (1,125-mile) road will follow some of the
route of the famous Ho Chi Minh trail which was the major supply route
of the communist forces fighting the Americans during the Vietnam war.

It will link the capital Hanoi with the southern hub of Ho Chi Minh
City and will initially have two lanes which will later be expanded to
four and then to six in some places after 2002.

The feasability study for the project is expected to begin in June and
work should start next year. The total cost of the project will could
come to as much as 5.5 billion dollars.
  ___________________________________

Muoi hails tight control as answer to Vietnam woes 

Hanoi (Reuter) -- Vietnam's top communist official, echoing broader
concern over problems surrounding Hanoi's decade-old reform drive,
issued a call on Saturday for tighter state and ideological control.

As state dailies praised the late hardline revolutionary Le Duan on
his 90th anniversary, 80-year-old Communist Party chief Do Muoi warned
of a system out of control and said punishment of officials in a major
recent corruption case should be read as a lesson to ``managers.''

``If State control was strictly tightened, no cases like that would
ever be seen,'' he was quoted as saying by the English-language
Vietnam News, referring to a graft scandal at Ho Chi Minh City
party-affiliated firm Tamexco.

Four people were sentenced to death in January in connection with the
case and others jailed. Appeals for leniency, earlier this month, were
rejected.

In a separate interview with the Thanh Nien (Youth) newspaper, Muoi
stressed the point further, quoting from Lenin and saying that without
``inspection and control'' socialism could not exist.

``For instance, if a family does not know how to keep its assets, it
will lose them,'' he said. ``Therefore, the great lesson is to carry
out frequent inspection and control...''

Muoi's remarks followed a speech earlier in the week by President Le
Duc Anh in which the head of state criticised ``individualism'' -- a
vague but potentially powerful socialist term which for several years
in Vietnam had been extinct.

During the 1950s the expression was used to back a disastrous
Mao-inspired crackdown on land and property-owners, but analysts said
Anh's use was more an attack on those Vietnamese citizens who have
rode the crest of ten years of capitalist-style reforms.

Like other socialist states Vietnam's political world has been
dominated for years by debate over the merits and handling of economic
and open-door policies.

But some local and overseas analysts say the differences of opinion
have grown over the past year as Vietnam -- despite strong
macro-economic fundamentals -- undergoes its first cyclical downturn
since reforms were introduced in the late 1980s.

The recent emergence of serious problems in the domestic banking
industry related to property speculation and corruption has been cited
as one example of the difficulties Hanoi is now facing in the
management of its market-economy.

Muoi made no direct mention of the problems but emphasised the need to
strengthen ideological control so that stability and socialist
development could be ensured.

``The most important thing is to further enhance the socialist
democracy,'' he said, ``...so that the 'people know, implement,
discuss and check.'''
  ___________________________________

Vietnam: Hailstorm Destroys Homes, Rice Crops In North

Hanoi (AP)--An intense hail storm destroyed 18 homes, damaged
thousands more and ruined rice crops in northern Vietnam, an official
newspaper reported Saturday.

More than 2,000 homes and thousands of hectares of crops were damaged
in a hailstorm that swept through the northern provinces of Vietnam,
the state-controlled New Hanoi newspaper reported.

At least two children were hurt by debris falling from the roof of
their school while they sat in their classroom. Another woman was
rescued from underneath her collapsed home, the newspaper said.

The storm Tuesday night in Vinh Phuc province was situated on the
outside of the capital, Hanoi, the state-controlled newspaper New
Hanoi reported Saturday.

Schools, clinics, and local government buildings were also damaged.
Losses from the storm have been estimated to be as much as 6 billion
dong ($550,000), the report said.
  ___________________________________

Many Vietnamese boat people face Hong Kong Deportation

WASHINGTON (AP) -- With the time nearing for Hong Kong to revert to
Chinese rule, some 4,000 of 205,000 Vietnamese who fled to the British
colony since 1975 face return to their homeland, the State Department
said Friday.

``The Hong Kong government expects to repatriate these individuals
back to Vietnam prior to the July 1 reversion of Hong Kong to China,''
department spokesman Nicholas Burns said.

The United States, which has resettled more than 1 million Vietnamese
since the communist takeover of U.S.-backed South Vietnam in 1975,
helped organize the international program to rescue and help the
Vietnamese fleeing in rickety boats to other East Asian countries.

More than 140,000 of the 205,000 reaching Hong Kong were determined to
be genuine refugees entitled to political asylum, rather than economic
migrants, Burns said. They have been resettled outside Vietnam.

About 64,500 were found in the three-stage screening not entitled to
asylum, and about 60,000 of these have returned voluntarily or ``been
returned,'' Burns said.

``We understand there are currently 4,000 Vietnamese asylum-seekers
remaining in Hong Kong,'' he said, pinpointing the final group now
facing repatriation.

Screening began with interviews by Hong Kong functionaries who
selected those entitled to asylum and resettlement, followed by review
by higher officials. Those still rejected were examined by the U.N.
High Commission for Refugees, which exercised power to uphold or
overrule the Hong Kong decision, Burns said.

Thirty-nine of the approximately 4,000 have appealed for judicial
review now pending before the Hong Kong high court, in what Burns said
appears to be their final chance of avoiding forced return.

The State Department has said it knows no boat people who after
repatriation were persecuted for trying to leave Vietnam.