VN News (Apr. 11, 1997)

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

Former South Vietnamese commandos abandoned by CIA demand pay
Beijing optimistic on solving sea dispute with Hanoi 
Drugs scandal puts Vietnam on trial
Hanoi welcomes appointment of first US ambassador since war
China, Vietnam Fail To Resolve Oil Rig Dispute-Foreign Min
Vietnam Hasn't Decided On North Korean Request To Buy Food
Vietnam's Washington envoy seeks to bury the past 
China, Vietnam offshore talks in deadlock
Vietnamese Newspaper Highlights - April 10, 1997 
Villagers remember new U.S. envoy to Hanoi 
Rats Destroy 20,000 Hectares of Crops in Vietnam 
U.S. Confirms Peterson First Ambassador To Vietnam 
Four Vietnamese Newspapers Now Available on Internet 


Former South Vietnamese commandos abandoned by CIA demand pay

by Karen Lowe

LOS ANGELES (AFP) - The former South Vietnamese commandos were first
written off as dead, even though the CIA knew they were alive behind
enemy lines.

Now, the Pentagon has refused to pay them for their suffering despite
a law passed by Congress on restitution.

On Sunday, the aging commandos who were left behind in prison camps at
the end of the Vietnam war for 15 years during which they were
tortured and starved will speak out in Little Saigon, south of here in
Orange County.

The largest cluster of the 280 remaining commandos live in California
and about a dozen will describe the conditions they endured in Vietnam
and the indignities that the US government has inflicted upon them
since.

Congress approved legislation last year to compensate the commandos
who took part in US spy missions during the Vietnam War, parachuting
behind enemy lines in what were among the most dangerous missions.

The Pentagon, which helped draft the legislation, has refused to pay
40,000 dollars to each former commando, insisting that the law is too
vague because it "urges" instead of "requires" restitution.

"They don't want to admit what happened despite the unanimous vote in
the Senate and the signature of president," said John Mattes, a
Florida-based attorney who has represented the commandos in a class
action suit.

Mattes, in a telephone interview, accused military "renegades" who
perceive weakness in the Pentagon as "trying to cover up what they've
done for the past 30 years."

Newly elected Orange County Representative Loretta Sanchez has written
Defense Secretary William Cohen asking for the commandos to be
compensated but her office said the Pentagon has not responded.

"They are stonewalling," said Mattes of the Pentagon's refusal to pay
the men, many of whom are in their 50s and older.

Many still suffer from years of beatings, exhaustion, hunger,
shackling so tight that chains cut their skin, causing some to bleed
to death and others to go so numb they were unaware rats were eating
their flesh.

The last of the commandos were released in 1988. Of the 450 caught,
fewer than 280 survived their ordeal as prisoners of war.

Until the bill was signed by President Bill Clinton, Justice
Department and Central Intelligence Agency attorneys had denied that
the "Lost Army Commandos" ever existed, or that their missions ever
happened, Mattes said.

The commandos and their families filed a lawsuit for compensation,
arguing the US government not only knew they were alive but told their
families they were dead to end payments to them.

The US government began the covert operation against North Vietnam in
1959 and it continued until January of 1964. Frogmen, boat crewmen,
maritime assault teams and paratroopers infiltrated North Vietnam.

Nearly 500 commandos in two operations were listed as captured or
killed after slipping into North Vietnam but US officials knew most
were captured as spies and given long prison sentences, according to
court documents.
                 ___________________________________


Beijing optimistic on solving sea dispute with Hanoi 

BEIJING (AFP) - Beijing's foreign ministry voiced optimism Friday that
China would be able to resolve a maritime dispute with Vietnam, and
announced plans for a vice-ministerial meeting on the issue next week.

"The meeting was held in a very good atmosphere and the two sides had
friendly and frank discussions," a ministry official said.

"We think this issue should be handled by the two countries concerned
and we are quite confident that we will be able to solve it."

Expert-level negotiators from China and Vietnam completed two days of
talks in Beijing Thursday aimed at resolving a dispute over China's
deployment of an exploratory oil rig in a disputed sea area on March
7.

Expert-level negotiators from China and Vietnam completed two days of
talks in Beijing Thursday aimed at resolving a dispute over China's
deployment of an exploratory oil rig in a disputed sea area on March
7.

The Chinese official, who requested anonymity, said the China-ASEAN
(Association of Southeast Asian Nations) meeting scheduled for April
17-19 in eastern China, would provide a further opportunity for at
least vice-minister level discussions of the issue.

"The Vietnamese Vice Foreign Minister (Vu Khoan) will attend the ASEAN
meeting next week so I think that Chinese Vice Foreign Minister Tang
Jaixuan should be able to talk with him (on this issue)," the
offficial said.

"As for whether this issue will be raised at the senior officials
meeting, this is not a forum to discuss bilateral issues, but whatever
questions are raised at the meeting, the Chinese side will be happy to
express their position."

The Kantan III rig -- which was withdrawn shortly before the talks --
was drilling in a disputed zone just south of the Gulf of Tonkin,
which is almost halfway between the central-Vietnamese coast and the
Chinese island of Hainan.

The zone is believed to be rich in natural gas.

China and Vietnam have twice run into territorial disputes in the
South China Sea, first in 1974 over the Paracel islands and again in
1988 over the Spratly Islands.

Further trouble brewed when China signed an exploration agreement with
the US-based Crestone Energy Corp. in 1992 to drill for oil near the
Spratlys.

The oil-rich Spratly Islands, are claimed wholly or in part by Brunei,
Malaysia, the Philippines, and Vietnam which are all ASEAN members.
                 ___________________________________


Drugs scandal puts Vietnam on trial

By Andy Soloman
Asia Times

Hanoi -- Vietnam's biggest drug-trafficking trial with 25 defendants,
which include several senior police officers, is set to go to court in
the first week of May, a court official said on Thursday.

Police and state prosecutors have agreed to delay the prosecution of
nine others originally charged with involvement in the case pending
further investigations. The nine will be required to attend court to
give evidence.

If convicted in the trial, scheduled to begin in Hanoi on May 2, some
of those charged will face possible death penalties.

The extent of the scandal - a tale of greed, corruption, betrayal and
cronyism which penetrates deep inside Vietnam's powerful internal
security apparatus - has rocked the country's establishment.

The case has attracted considerable diplomatic attention, as evidence
grows showing Vietnam to be an increasingly important transit point
for Golden Triangle heroin.

Some of those policemen arrested would have been officers that would
have worked closely with international anti-narcotic programs
sponsored by the United States and Belgium governments, as well as
with the United Nations Drug Control Program activities in Vietnam.

The unraveling of Vietnam's biggest drug case began with the dramatic
last-minute confession in July 1996 by a Lao national, Sieng Pheng, as
he was about to be executed by a firing squad after being convicted of
transporting 15.5kg of heroin from Laos to Hanoi in January 1995.

A spate of arrests of high-ranking police officers followed Pheng's
confession. Another 40 were arrested following further revelations
from Pheng.

Of the 34 charged with drug-related offenses, 12 are police officers
and four are members of Vietnam's border police responsible for
guarding the country's northwestern border with Laos. Another Lao is
also included in the list of defendants, the official Quan Doi Nhan
Dan (People's Army) reported on Thursday. The paper gave no details on
the remaining 17 accused.

The trial comes at a time when growing heroin abuse, especially among
schoolchildren and youngsters from some of Vietnam's newly-emerging
middle class, is of rising concern. Official figures estimate there
are 200,000 drug addicts in Vietnam.

But now the Ministry of Interior is in the embarrassing position of
having to prosecute some of its top officers who were responsible for
the fight against drugs. "If the charges are correct, those people who
committed the crimes should be prosecuted ... regardless of who they
are. Everyone should be equal before the law," a ministry official
said.

Court officials were not available on Thursday to clarify which nine
of the 34 people originally charged have had their court hearings
delayed.

According to Quan Doi Nhan Dan, the ring-leaders of the case are Vu
Xuan Truong, a police captain recently posted to the high-profile
anti-social evils campaign after several years running the Lai Chau
border gate with Laos, a driver called Dao Xuan Xe and Lao national
Sieng Khamchau.

"It is the biggest and most serious drug case discovered in Vietnam.
The line had been established for a long period with a huge amount of
drug trafficking from Thailand to Laos and then to Vietnam," the paper
said.

When arrested in one of his three houses last summer, Truong was found
to have about US$85,000 in cash, three guns and more than five
kilograms of heroin.

Other senior police officers involved are Lieutenant-Colonel Vu Ban,
head of the Ministry of Interior's Economic Investigation Section
under the Investigation Police, and one of his deputies, Lieutenant
Nguyen Van Quan. They were charged with "irresponsibility causing
serious consequences".

Police major Vu Huu Chinh, deputy chief of the ministry's
Anti-Narcotic Bureau under the Economic Police, and his underling
Captain Nguyen Viet Ha, stand accused of falsifying evidence to
protect themselves and their colleagues.

Ban and Quan were responsible for the original investigation following
the arrest of Pheng in January 1995 and Ban was first suspected of
involvement after allowing Chinh and Truong to use Pheng's impounded
car to supposedly "track down drug traffickers". But they had another,
very different reason for wanting to get hold of the car.

After Pheng was convicted and sentenced to death in June 1995, the car
was sold and the new owner reported that the fuel tank only held 20
liters instead of the 50 liters normal for the model. Investigators
checked the car again and found a secret compartment that could hold
an estimated 20kg of heroin. No more heroin was found but after
questioning, Chinh and Truong admitted taking the heroin hidden in the
secret compartment.

Quan also allowed Truong and Chinh to meet Pheng in prison. Pheng
claimed he had spent US$100,000 and Truong US$60,000 in bribes to
cover those "arrangements".

It remains unclear whether Pheng's death sentence will be commuted or
not.

Vietnamese police officials estimate as much as 15 tonnes of heroin
could be entering Vietnam each year, and an increasing amount is
finding its way onto the domestic market rather than just being in
transit to other countries.

In the last two months of 1996, Vietnamese police claimed to have
arrested 3,228 people, including more than 1,000 students, for drug
offenses and seized 5.9kg of heroin and 205.5kg of raw opium.

Last month, a Canadian overseas Vietnamese woman, 41-year-old Nguyen
Thi Hiep, was sentenced to death after being caught smuggling 5.5kg of
heroin. Her mother, Tran Thi Cam, 71, who lived in Hanoi, was given a
life sentence. The two were caught when trying to take a flight to
Hong Kong from Hanoi in April 1996.
                 ___________________________________


Hanoi welcomes appointment of first US ambassador since war

By Pascale Trouillaud

Hanoi (AFP) - The first US ambassador since the end of the Vietnam war
in 1975 will rediscover in peacetime the country where he was held as
a POW for more than six years after being shot down.

Vietnam on Friday hailed the appointment of Douglas Pete Peterson as
the new ambassador and the first ever to Hanoi.

"This is a positive development in American-Vietnamese relations and
will help to strengthen links between the two countries to their
mutual benefit and the benefit of peace, stability and the development
of the Asia-Pacific region," a foreign ministry spokesman said.

The appointment of 61-year-old Peterson was finally confirmed Thursday
by the US Senate.

The former US Congressman, who spent six-and-a-half years in
Vietnamese prisoner of war camps, faces the task of bridging the gap
between the US -- the world's premier power and Vietnam -- one of the
last bastions of communism.

He was first nominated eight months ago but his confirmation was held
up by Republican Senators opposed to President Bill Clinton's
normalization of relations with Washington's former foe.

"We hope that with his wide knowledge of Vietnam, Mr Peterson will
actively contribute to relations between our two countries and their
armies," Colonel Vu Tan, director of the defence ministry's foreign
relations department told AFP.

"Vietnam's policy is to turn the page of the past and look to the
future," he said.

Peterson's desire not to "live in the past" was a strong factor behind
the normalising of US Vietnamese relations, two decades after the end
of the bitter conflict in which three million Vietnamese and nearly
60,000 Americans lost their lives.

He will arrive in Hanoi within the next two weeks, US diplomatic
sources said.

The US mission in Hanoi, inaugurated by then secretary of state Warren
Christopher in August 1995, has so far been under the direction of a
charge d'affaires.

Senators approved Peterson Thursday after an eleventh-hour compromise
with Republican Senator Bob Smith of New Hampshire, who opposed any
upgrading of US relations with Vietnam.

Peterson, an Air Force captain, was shot down on a combat mission on
September 10, 1966, when a North Vietnamese surface-to-air missile hit
his Phantom jet.

He was held at three different prisons, including the infamous "Hanoi
Hilton," and he has said he was tortured.

By the time he arrives, the remains of the notorious prison will have
made way for a Singaporean-built office block in the centre of Hanoi,
which is enjoying a peacetime economic boom unthinkable during decades
of war.

Peterson, who was released in 1973, has said his top priority as
ambassador will be obtaining a full accounting from Vietnam for US
personnel missing in action and as prisoners of war.

Even with the dilution of Vietnam's anti-market ideology of recent
years, difficulties still remain in relations with Washington.

Vietnam would dearly like a trade accord and Most Favoured Nation
trading status with Washington, but despite arduous negotations cannot
yet give the US the guarantees it wants in return.

And differences between the two sides often arise from the fact that
they don't know how to open a dialogue.

"It is very difficult for Americans here because they have no idea
what Vietnam is like today," said a western businessman.

In spite of the lifting of the US trade embargo in 1994, American
companies, put off by the business climate in Vietnam, lag behind
European or Asian competitors in the country.

Some US companies, like Bank of America Corp and Chrysler Corp are
scaling down their Vietnam operations and Amoco has withdrawn
altogether.

Despite the rapprochment, Hanoi continues to issue, on occasions,
fierce diatribes against "hostile foreign forces," trying to win
political advantage on issues such as human rights.

However, the work of US diplomats in Hanoi is mainly devoted to
improving political and economic links and its embassy, with 22
diplomats is the one of the largest in Hanoi.
                 ___________________________________


China, Vietnam Fail To Resolve Oil Rig Dispute-Foreign Min

BEIJING (AP) -- China and Vietnam ended three days of talks Friday
with both sides standing by their claims to a patch of potentially
oil-rich waters, China's Foreign Ministry said Friday.

The bilateral negotiations, which began Wednesday, were the result of
China's dispatching of an oil-prospecting rig to disputed waters
between Vietnam's north coast and China's Hainan Island on March 7.
Both sides say the territory is their own.

A spokesman for the foreign ministry confirmed the end to the
expert-level talks. He declined, however, to comment on whether the
two sides would meet again at higher levels.

'Expert consultations between China on the issue of Kantan 03 have
concluded,' the spokesman said. 'The expert groups have fully
exchanged their opinions in a friendly and candid atmosphere.

Vietnamese foreign ministry sources refused to comment on the matter.

Later Friday, the Vietnamese Foreign Ministry did issue an official
comment on the conclusion of the expert-level talks between Vietnamese
and Chinese officials over the disputed South China Sea waters.

'The two sides have a better understanding of each other's positions,
but unfortunately we haven't reached a common position on the issue,'
the statement said.

The Vietnamese government reiterated its desire for the dispute to be
resolved through negotiation, but also called for China to avoid
inflaming the issue again in the future.

Vietnam 'calls for a stop to any actions that can cause more
complications to the situation or affect the friendly relations
between Vietnam and China,' the Foreign Ministry said.
                 ___________________________________


Vietnam Hasn't Decided On North Korean Request To Buy Food 

Hanoi (AP,DJ) -- Despite a request from the visiting deputy prime
minister of enfamished North Korea, the Vietnamese government hasn't
decided whether it will sell food to its fellow communist state.

'North Korea has proposed to buy some more food from Vietnam. The
relevant bodies of the two sides will discuss this matter concretely,'
a Vietnamese Foreign Ministry statement said Friday in response to
questions submitted by Dow Jones.

The statement didn't indicate how much food North Korea has sought to
purchase, or on what terms.

Kong Chin Tae, deputy prime minister of the collapsing Stalinist
redoubt, has been on an official visit to Vietnam this week and
meeting an array of leaders.

During Kong's trip, official Vietnamese media have reported frequently
on expressions of sympathy about the dire food situation in North
Korea, but no substantive steps have been mentioned.

North Korea 'highly appreciated' Vietnam's grants and concessionary
sales of rice in 1996, the Foreign Ministry statement said.

Last year, Vietnam is believed to have supplied about 20,000 metric
tons of rice to North Korea.

Although both are communist, Vietnam and North Korea have a polite but
distant relationship. Vietnam has moved forward strongly with economic
reforms in the last decade and opened up to the world, while North
Korea has clung stubbornly to its doctrine of socialist self-reliance.

Vietnam also has established diplomatic relations with South Korea.

Total two-way trade between South Korea and Vietnam in 1996 was about
$1.80 billion, according to an official at the South Korean embassy.

Total two-way trade between North Korea and Vietnam last year is
estimated at less than $1.0 million, the South Korean official said.
                 ___________________________________


Vietnam's Washington envoy seeks to bury the past 

Hanoi (Reuter) - The long-awaited exchange of ambassadors between the
United States and Vietnam will help turn a page in the two countries'
turbulent history of war and mutual suspicion, Vietnam's Washington
ambassador-to-be said on Friday.

``Between the two countries there are still things we have to
overcome, like the legacy of the war,'' Le Van Bang told Reuters.

``We have go out and explain to people that this is the next step, and
the next step will be better for both countries.''

Bang hailed Thursday's Senate confirmation of Douglas ``Pete''
Peterson as the first U.S. ambassador to Hanoi and said it would give
new impetus to relations which have moved at a glacial pace since the
fanfare of normalisation two years ago.

``This is a great step in relations...'' he said. ``Vietnam asked the
President of the United States in 1945 to recognise Vietnam and it has
taken half a century to get there.''

The prospect of Peterson, a former U.S. Air Force pilot and prisoner
of war, returning as ambassador to the communist country he once
fought has fired imaginations around the world.

But his career diplomat counterpart -- whose war contribution was as a
Youth Brigade volunteer repairing roads -- has missed out on media
attention.

After a stint at Vietnam's embassy in London from 1982 to 1986, Bang
returned to become deputy director and then director of the Foreign
Ministry's Americas department in Hanoi.

In 1993 he was made Vietnam's ambassador to the United Nations and
then Charge d'Affaires at the embassy in Washington.

His appointment as ambassador now needs final approval from U.S.
President Bill Clinton, something Bang described as a formality.

Bang, 50, said his biggest challenge would be to convince Americans
who still associate Vietnam with the images of a war which killed more
than three million people that his country has changed.

``My challenge is to inform the American people that Vietnam is a new
country, it's a potential market for American businessmen and it is a
country that wants to be friends with American people,'' he said.

Bang said he would like to see Hanoi and Washington clear the hurdles
still in the way of a comprehensive trade agreement this year and
hinted that Washington should soft-pedal on its demands for Vietnam to
liberalise trade and investment regimes.

``Ours is still an undeveloped country. The United States... has to
see that Vietnam should be given some time to prepare,'' he said.
``Their requirements and requests might be higher than reality. Even
if we agree to that, we cannot carry it out.''

During a visit to Vietnam this week, U.S. Treasury Secretary Robert
Rubin called on Hanoi to quicken the pace and broaden the scope of its
decade-old experiment in reform along market lines.

Bang said that once here, Peterson could make progress on the United
States' priority in Vietnam -- full accounting for the 1,588
servicemen still counted as missing in action (MIA).

Last year, Hanoi expressed irritation over Washington's insistence on
the MIA issue, saying there were other areas of humanitarian concern
in Vietnam that merited attention.
                 ___________________________________


China, Vietnam offshore talks in deadlock 

Hanoi (Reuter) - Vietnam said on Friday it had failed to reach
agreement during three days of talks in Beijing over competing claims
to an offshore area where China positioned an oil rig last month.

A Foreign Ministry statement echoed Chinese comments made earlier that
the two countries had gained some understanding of each other's
positions, but said pointedly that the search for common ground had
not borne fruit.

``As a result of the negotiations the two sides have a better
understanding of each other's point of view. However, regrettably no
common perception of this issue was reached,'' the statement said.

``We hope that a similar incident will not be repeated in future,
which might make the situation more complicated and cause impact on
relations between the two countries and stability in the region,'' the
ministry added.

The row erupted in March after China's National Offshore Oil Corp
positioned its Kan Tan 111 oil rig and accompanying vessels in
disputed waters between Hainan Island and the coast of central
Vietnam.

The Chinese firm and Vietnamese officials said last week the rig had
been withdrawn from the area following the completion of planned
exploration work.

Friday's foreign ministry statement formally confirmed that position
for the first time, but called additionally on China not to allow a
repetition of the incident.

Beijing said on Thursday that the talks had resulted in an improved
understanding of each other's positions but warned that differences
would take time to iron out.

China's Foreign Ministry made muted comment on the outcome on Friday,
simply saying that the two sides had exchanged views ``in a friendly
and frank atmosphere.''

Vietnam and China have a long history of territorial and other
disputes. The two countries fought a bloody border war in 1979 and
remained locked in hostility through most of the 1980s.

Vietnamese officials say there have been several such incidents since
relations with Beijing were normalised in 1991, but the Kan Tan 111
row marks the first time that Hanoi has sought to broaden a
sovereignty row with its northern neighbour into a regional issue.

Vietnam, which joined the Association of Southeast Asian Nations in
1995, won some verbal support for its position last month from ASEAN
ambassadors in Hanoi but all maintained that it was a bilateral issue.

The potential mineral riches of territory contested by Hanoi and
Beijing have been a constant threat to recent efforts by both sides to
boost ties. Both nations claim parts of the Tonkin Gulf and the
Paracel and Spratly island chains.

Regular discussions have been held in recent years to resolve land and
sea border demarcation differences, but the negotiations are seen as
having made negligible progress.
                 ___________________________________


Vietnamese Newspaper Highlights - April 10, 1997

Hanoi (VNA) - Highlights of Vietnam's daily newspapers today:

NHAN DAN:

1. During the 7th working day of the 11th National Assembly session,
the deputies asked for the National Assembly to settle the urging
socio-economic issues.

2. Daiwa Securities Co Ltd of Japan has opened its representative
office in Hanoi. Daiwa has been in Vietnam since 1992 and has invested
in Bien Hoa industrial zone, Ho Chi Minh City.

HANOI MOI:

1. The Hanoi Construction Sector this year strives to increase
production of construction materials by 19.5 percent. VIETNAM NEWS:

1. A cluster bomb left over from the war exploded in school yard,
killing seven children and injuring another 34 in the central coastal
province of Nghe An.

2. A large scale international exhibition aimed at developing the
economy of the Cuu Long (Mekong) River Delta will be held from April
17-24 in the southern province of Can Tho.
                 ___________________________________


Villagers remember new U.S. envoy to Hanoi 

HAI DUONG (Reuter) - Squatting on a mud bank in the rice plains of
northern Vietnam, Nguyen Danh Sinh and Nguyen Viet Chop must be
wondering what on earth is going on.

Thirty-one years ago they found the man who has been confirmed as the
first U.S. ambassador to Hanoi, Douglas ``Pete'' Peterson, lying at
the foot of a mango tree just outside their village, some 70 km (45
miles) east of the capital.

``We started to think it was important when a woman journalist turned
up here last year,'' Chop says.

Chop and Sinh, both aged 69, have had fame thrust upon them in recent
months as reporters, TV crews, local government minders and
interpreters have turned up by the truck load to interview the men of
An Binh village who caught Pete Peterson.

``If he had struggled he would have died. Because he didn't struggle
he is alive now,'' Chop says, politely and with no trace of
cold-bloodedness.

Late on the night of September 9, 1966, Peterson and a fellow airman,
on a mission near the northern port of Haiphong, jumped from their
doomed and burning plane into the darkness over Vietnam's Red River
delta.

Peterson's unglorious landing was in a mango tree by an irrigation
ditch. Chop says he had the presence of mind to bring with him some
candies and beer.

His fellow airman was picked up the next day. Peterson was the first
Westerner both Sinh and Chop had seen.

Stripped of all but his underclothes and marched back to the village,
he was locked in a storehouse, where Chop guarded him -- more from
attack by local people, than to prevent an escape -- until officials
arrived to escort him away.

``I didn't get much of an impression of him,'' he says. ``When we made
him walk I saw he was much taller than me and fatter. His toes were
very fat too.''

Washington must be hoping that Vietnam will get a stronger and more
positive impression of Peterson when he returns shortly as the first
U.S. ambassador to Hanoi.

During Senate confirmation hearings in Washington in mid-February he
referred to the relationship, saying he expected to ``play a critical
and constructive role in helping our nation mend further.''

Nobody thinks it will be easy.

Twenty-two years after the fall of Saigon more people think of
'Vietnam' as a country and not a war, but despite the progress in
relations diplomats concede that a huge amount of confidence-building
still remains to be done.

American influence is increasingly seen on the city streets of Vietnam
in the form of consumer products, popular music, videos and fashions,
but business links are still held back by the absence of a bilateral
agreement on trade.

Additionally the diplomatic talk of friendship, progress, and ``the
war is behind us,'' is belied by frequent and harsh rants in Vietnam's
state-controlled dailies against aspects of U.S. policy from Cuba, to
Radio Free Asia, to human rights.

Pete Peterson will face these and other complex issues once the
handshaking is over. As on a visit in 1993, he may also visit what
remains of the ``Hanoi Hilton'' -- the wartime prison in which he
spent some six and half years.

The villagers of An Binh hope he will return there too.

``The devastation caused during the war was the responsibility of both
sides,'' says Sinh, apparently prompted into political correctness by
the presence around him of both the journalists and several local
officials.

``The war is ended, the past should be closed. I just hope that when
the governments work together they think of what happened in the past,
and especially to our village.''
                 ___________________________________


Rats Destroy 20,000 Hectares of Crops in Vietnam 

HANOI (Xinhua News) - Rats have destroyed nearly 20,000 hectares of
rice and other crops across Vietnam, media reports quoted the Ministry
of Agriculture and Rural Development as saying today.

The ministry urged authorities and farmers to find efficient measures
to kill the rodents so as to protect crops, the official
English-language "Vietnam News" newspaper reported.

Rats still constitute a threat to crops in the country, although
millions of rats have been killed in northern Vietnam's Red River
delta, the reports said.
                 ___________________________________


U.S. Confirms Peterson First Ambassador To Vietnam 

WASHINGTON (AP) -- One-time fighter pilot Pete Peterson was confirmed
Thursday as the first U.S. ambassador to Vietnam, a country that
imprisoned and tortured him for 6 1/2 years.

Peterson will 'travel back to a place he found quite uncomfortable the
last time he resided there,' said former Vietnam POW John McCain,
R-Ariz., before the nomination was approved by voice vote.

Earlier this year Sen. Robert Smith, R-N.H., vowed to stop the
nomination, partly because he was dissatisfied with Vietnam's
accounting for Americans missing in action.

But on the Senate floor Thursday, Smith said, 'I never was opposed to
Pete Peterson. My concern was we needed to get the fullest possible
accounting...and if the ambassador going to Vietnam will do that, I'm
all for it. He went through hell in Vietnam.'
                 ___________________________________


Four Vietnamese Newspapers Now Available on Internet 

Hanoi (VNA) - The Hanoi-based Lao Dong (Labour) bi-weekly newspaper
has become the country's fourth newspaper to launch itself on the
internet. Readers can now find it on the ' Vietnam Intelligentsia'
network of FPT, now the largest computer company in Vietnam.

Earlier, the 'Thoi Bao Kinh Te' (Electronic Times), 'Thuong Mai'
(Trade) and 'Dau Tu' ( Vietnam Investment Review) were logged on the
internet of Ba Tin, a branch of 3C, Vietnam's first information
technology company.

The next mass medium on the internet is expected to the Vietnam News
Agency, the country's only wire service. VND is making final
preparations to open their own internet site for public use this April
on which they will log their daily bulletins and daily and weekly
newspapers, both in Vietnamese and English.

On February 5, Vietnam posted one of its first newspapers, the 'Que
Huong', on the Internet. Designed for the overseas Vietnamese
community it has so-far been accessed over 100,000 times by overseas
readers.

However, it might be still too early to hail electronic newspapers as
a new fad in Vietnam, though it is obviously catching on fast. Large
computer companies have been trying to set up their own internets,
urging newspapers to provide them with news feed.

Most of the over 500 newspapers in the country are also eager to join
the net as soon as they can despite speculation that their presence on
computer networks may hit readership figures. They all want to try out
the new medium which they have heard much about. Young people are no
less eager to probe into this new technology.

All the five newspapers on internet now are offering their service
free, for the internet themselves are operating on a trial basis,
offering subscribers free connections.

But in the long run, experts say, both newspapers and internet owners
can make good money, for the number of computer users is rising pretty
fast.