VN News (Apr. 20, 1997)

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

April 20: Vietnam: What's Behind Hanoi's Corruption Crackdown? 
April 20: Ex-POW to return to Vietnam in peace -- 1st U.S. ambassador...
April 20: Le Kha Phieu is The Man to Watch: Analysis 
April 20: Vietnam, China pledge to continue dialogue on maritime claims
April 20: Vietnam to hold national elections July 20 


Vietnam: What's Behind Hanoi's Corruption Crackdown?

By Todd Crowell and Ken Stier / Hanoi

LE VAN PHUC used every wile to avoid a life sentence. He brandished
his revolutionary credentials: His father and brother died fighting
the Americans, he told the judge, and his mother spent years in jail
for hiding the Viet Cong. "I've always been conscious of being a good
citizen," Phuc pleaded. "I beg your Honor for your better
understanding of me."

Once upon a time, such an appeal might have won him clemency. After
all, one of Hanoi's continuing priorities is paying off society's debt
to the families of soldiers who made the ultimate sacrifice in the
wars of independence. But Phuc was on trial for his role in Vietnam's
biggest corruption scandal, the Tamexco affair. And besides, times
have changed. He got life.

The Communist Party can talk all it wants about pernicious foreign
influence. But it is painfully aware that its foremost enemy resides
within, that there is perhaps no greater threat to its legitimacy than
rampant corruption among its own cadres. "People feel that the cadres
always want to make things difficult for them so they can get bribes,"
says a senior Vietnamese journalist. "For this reason the party is
losing a lot of influence. It is a matter of life or death for the
party."

That explains the government's ongoing crackdown against corruption.
New anti-graft legislation -- including extending the death penalty to
anyone involved in cases exceeding $27,000 -- is being debated in the
National Assembly. In May, Vietnam's biggest drug-smuggling case will
get under way. Among the 34 defendants are a dozen police, including
some senior Interior Ministry officials. Last week, the Vietnam-born
head of Peregrine Capital Vietnam was arrested for allegedly evading
taxes.

The bribes and kickbacks are getting bigger all the time. Two years
ago, two state officials were jailed for life for embezzling $1
million from a state-run noodle factory. By some accounts, up to $50
million in state assets were squandered in the Tamexco scandal. The
scam was masterminded by one Pham Huy Phuoc, the director general of a
trading company called Tamexco. It was owned by an economic unit of Ho
Chi Minh City and run by a party chapter. Most of the corruption
concerned fraudulent land deals at inflated prices, transactions that
got crucial assistance from officials at a state-owned bank.

Of those involved, mastermind Phuoc was a scamster from central
casting. His main passions, reputedly, were women and gambling. He
reportedly lost $100,000 in a card game and gave his mistress $200,000
worth of gold to buy a villa. He lavished expensive gifts on
government and party officials. Altogether, 87 of them traveled abroad
through his largess. In an Indonesian hotel, one bank director found
$7,000 slipped between his sheets when he left his bedroom for a
moment. When the cash ran out, Phuoc gambled away cars belonging to
Tamexco.

In the process, he pocketed $14 million. Like his co-defendant Phuc,
Phuoc begged for mercy. If he were executed for corruption, he asked,
who would care for his mother and three daughters? The judge was
unmoved. "Ex-Communist Party member Phuoc cannot be vindicated,"
declared Supreme People's Court Judge Bui Hoang Danh. "He has become a
most dangerous criminal to the people of Vietnam. He deserves the
highest punishment" -- that is, death. (several officials with
suspiciously close links to the case, including a deputy governor of
the state bank, are now being investigated.) Phuoc and Phuc can appeal
to President Le Duc Anh, but the chance of getting mercy from that
quarter are slim. Earlier this month, Anh railed against so-called
individualism. Translation: the selfish pursuit of personal gain; in
short, corruption.

The fact that nearly a dozen of the 20 Tamexco defendants were members
of the party has caused much soul-searching. The socialist system was
supposed to be immune to such capitalist viruses. Aside from a few bad
apples, it was expected that party members would put the welfare of
the country before personal gain. So the recent trials represent not
so much routine corruption cases as a loss of innocence.

Of course, corruption is not exactly a revelation for ordinary
Vietnamese used to paying off virtually every civil servant they
encounter. The country's labyrinthine bureaucracy, low official
salaries and the broad discretionary powers of low-ranking bureaucrats
provide many opportunities for minor graft. Anything that requires a
license means a pay-off. Even emergency treatment in public hospitals
can be speeded up with an under-the-counter payment.

The doi moi market reforms introduced in 1986 also multiplied the
opportunities for bribery. Expatriates are prime targets for
shakedowns. One foreign businessman claims he was hit up for $1
million if his firm really wanted the contract on an internationally
funded infrastructure project. "'That's the deal; take it or leave it'
was their attitude, and they didn't even blink an eye," he grouses.

The leadership, divided on where to take reforms, understands that
corruption can undermine the progress made so far. And yet the
authorities have fallen back on predictable, short-term remedies, such
as ideological vetting of cadres and more spiritually enriching
stories in the official media. Last year a TV program recounting the
tale of the first -- and only -- senior Communist official executed
for corruption was shown on revolutionary holidays. The event took
place in 1949. Nearly 50 years on, more heads may be ready to roll.

But the war on bribery will not be easy, not with graft-busters
themselves apparently on the take. When the home of anti-corruption
official Nguyen Ky Cam caught fire last year, the first firefighters
on the scene ignored the blaze and went straight upstairs to loot a
safe of some $25,000 in gold. Cam apparently does not have the same
job, but small wonder that Vietnamese are losing some measure of faith
in leaders who have long expounded socialist rectitude. -- Asia Week
                 ___________________________________


Ex-POW to return to Vietnam in peace -- 1st U.S. ambassador
to reunited country hopes to resolve cases of missingservicemen

By David S. Cloud
The Dallas Morning News

WASHINGTON - There was a time when Pete Peterson never imagined
returning to Vietnam, certainly not to live and work.

An Air Force pilot shot down on a bombing mission in 1966, Mr.
Peterson endured 61/2 years of torture and isolation, living on grass
soup and rice in the dank North Vietnamese prisoner-of-war camp known
as the Hanoi Hilton.

Freed in 1973, he vowed to leave Vietnam and its torment buried in his
past. It was a conscious act of self-preservation, like preparing for
another mission, Mr. Peterson says.

"I had enough hate in my life for {the} six and a half years that I
sat in a cell," he said in a recent interview. "Had it continued, I
would not have been able to function. I essentially put it behind me
on the day I walked out of that cell."

Now Mr. Peterson will be going back to Hanoi, where he once was taken
in shackles, as the first U.S. ambassador since the war. The Senate
recently approved his nomination, ending a yearlong delay that left
Mr. Peterson in limbo while lawmakers squabbled over restoring ties
with a former enemy.

The U.S. has never had an ambassador in Hanoi, capital of reunited
Vietnam. On April 29, Mr. Peterson will be sworn in and he will assume
his post in early May.

President Clinton's choice of the ex-POW and three-term Florida
congressman has been widely praised - by veterans groups that oppose
normalization of relations, by career diplomats at the State
Department and even by Vietnam's Communist leaders.

That varied support is recognition that it may take someone like Mr.
Peterson, who has every reason to harbor hatred, to be the agent for
reconciliation between former enemies.

"The experience that he went through led him in the direction of
healing and reconciliation, as it did in my case," said Sen. John
McCain, R-Ariz., who spent six years as a POW in the same camp.

Mr. Peterson is "the only person we would have supported for the job,
and the reason is that he's been there and he knows the issues that
affect Vietnam veterans," said George Duggins, national president of
Vietnam Veterans of America.

The last American ambassador in Vietnam, Graham Martin, made a frantic
helicopter departure from Saigon, capital of the south, barely ahead
of the North Vietnamese troops encircling the city. It was an
ignominious close to America's involvement in the conflict, one of
many painful images burned in the national psyche.

Mr. Peterson's hand sometimes still goes numb, and his elbows bear the
scars of rope burns inflicted by his torturers. But he is determined
to leave a different mark.

"I really hope that I can use this relationship to bind the hurt that
still exists in the populations of both countries," he said. "We're
not the only ones who were hurt here. The Vietnamese lost whole age
groups of men."

Mr. Peterson's first priority is to make further progress in dozens of
unresolved cases of U.S. prisoners of war and those still listed as
missing in action. The Vietnam Veterans of America opposed Mr.
Clinton's decision to normalize relations last July, saying it would
remove leverage on Hanoi for full disclosure.

Mr. Peterson disagrees with critics of normalization. He notes that
many of the dozens of remaining cases involve servicemen who were
operating in mountainous jungle or other remote parts of Vietnam along
the border with neighboring Laos. Hanoi is cooperating, he says,
adding that his presence will help speed the identification of
remains.

He insists that Hanoi will not get what it really wants - U.S.
investment and full commercial ties - unless there is further
progress.

Despite his years of captivity, Douglas "Pete" Peterson never set out
to become an advocate for POWs.

Mr. Peterson was piloting his 67th bombing mission Sept. 10, 1966,
when his F-4 Phantom was hit by a surface-to-air missile. After
ejecting, he landed in a tree, with injuries to his right arm,
shoulder and leg. Captured by local militiamen, Mr. Peterson was taken
to Hoa Lo prison, infamously known as the Hanoi Hilton.

Denied shoes, adequate food, medical treatment and contact with other
American prisoners, he was kept in a 12-by-20-foot cell with a board
to sleep on. Torture sessions were regular and brutal. Mr. Peterson
kept his sanity by focusing on imaginary projects, like building a
house.

He was transferred twice during his imprisonment.

Mr. Peterson's wife and three children waited three years for word of
his fate. Then they saw him on a propaganda film released by Hanoi
during Christmas 1969. In a package of his belongings the Air Force
sent to Mr. Peterson's family, there was a jade bracelet and carved
wooden cat that Mr. Peterson had intended to give his daughter, Paula
Blackburn, after returning from his tour.

"The package came home, but my dad didn't," Ms. Blackburn, now 38,
said in an interview. "But we kept his memory alive."

When he finally did come home, all Mr. Peterson wanted was to resume
flying jets. He spoke little about his POW experience, and then only
if asked.

"He just wanted to get back in another airplane and show everybody he
could still fly," Ms. Blackburn said.

After retiring from the Air Force in 1981, Mr. Peterson settled in the
Florida Panhandle, starting a construction business and a computer
company. He then became headmaster of a school for teenage offenders.
In 1990, he ran for a U.S. House seat as a Democrat and won.

Soon afterward, Mr. Peterson made his first trip back to Vietnam as a
member of a congressional delegation seeking information on missing
servicemen. He went again in 1993 and made an emotional visit to the
Hanoi Hilton with Mr. McCain. The camp is now a film studio, as it was
before the war.

"I kind of looked at him, and we smiled a little at one another as we
thought about our past experiences," Mr. McCain said. "Although there
are some individual Vietnamese that both of us do not forgive, time
had changed things."

Mr. Peterson's wife, Carlotta, died of cancer in 1995. His youngest
son, Doug, 16, had been killed several years before in a car accident.
His eldest son, Michael, is 39.

Never comfortable as a professional politician, Mr. Peterson quickly
soured on the partisanship and slow pace of Capitol Hill and announced
he would not seek re-election in 1996.

"It was a frustrating experience for him" being in Congress, said Rep.
Lane Evans, D-Ill. "He wanted to make a meaningful contribution, but
he didn't like the rancor and the long hours, particularly when his
wife was sick."

Now Mr. Peterson has a new challenge - bringing the war that he once
submerged in his subconscious to a more satisfying conclusion for the
country.

Discussing his motivations for accepting the job recently with his
daughter, Mr. Peterson said he "could not be a free man without
knowing what happened to the other MIAs who did not come home."
                 ___________________________________


Le Kha Phieu is The Man to Watch

By Todd Crowell and Ken Stier/ Hanoi

THE MORNING TEA BREAK during the opening session of the National
Assembly earlier this month provided a rare opportunity for
journalists to mingle informally with -- and even ask a few questions
of -- Vietnam's normally secretive leaders. Assembly Speaker Nong Duc
Manh, who had just delivered a report on the body's work over the last
five years, probably expected to be the focus of attention. Instead,
reporters hovered around a diminutive and, until recently, obscure
army general.

Lt.-Gen. Le Kha Phieu, 68, was clearly nervous about suddenly meeting
a pack of foreign journalists, and he didn't have much to say.
Nevertheless, as the leading contender to become general secretary of
the Vietnamese Communist Party, he has become an object of
considerable interest both inside and outside the country. The fact
that so little is known about his background and his views only
increases the amount of speculation about him.

    
Since the death of Ho Chi Minh in 1969, Vietnam has been run
collectively by the Politburo headed by three officials: the
president, prime minister and general secretary. The current troika is
Le Duc Anh, Vo Van Kiet and Do Muoi respectively. The latter is now
80, the other two in their 70s. Anh, the battle-tested ex-general who
led Vietnam's forces in Cambodia, recently suffered a stroke, though
he did address the Assembly. Given their ages and health, the current
line-up is overdue for a shake-up.

There had been talk of a new leadership emerging from the Eighth Party
Congress held last June, but the delegates confirmed the trio in their
current posts. However, by creating a new five-member Standing
Committee in the Politburo, they did shed some light on the
pretenders. The Committee includes Phieu as well as Nguyen Tan Dung,
47, a vice minister of interior who technically ranks near the bottom
of the Politburo hierarchy. Phieu's appointment demonstrates the
growing influence of the army, and reflects the party's determination
to maintain tight political controls while slowly reforming the
economy. The army's prestige has risen in part because it has avoided
the corruption scandals that have tarred other government
institutions.

Phieu heads the political department of the armed forces, which means
that he is both soldier and party man. Little is known about his
battlefield exploits, if any, other than that he spent six years in
Cambodia when Vietnam occupied the country. Not much has surfaced
either about what has propelled his rise to the top in the past few
years. Yet, strangely, he is already being seen as a potential
strongman. One reason why, says a political observer, is that "he
combines the two most powerful lobbies -- the party and the military."

By some accounts, he is already running the party apparatus on a
day-to-day basis, with Do Muoi nominally in charge. Like other aspects
of his thin biography, little is known about his economic views.
Diplomats in Hanoi, who have just begun to meet him, contend that he
generally supports the economic reform program. Perhaps more
significant, given the embarrassment of recent corruption scandals to
the party, is that he projects an image of being clean and modest.
Says one diplomat: "That's the line the party wants to show, as it
used to in the past." And now, as it wants to in the future. -- Asia
Week
                 ___________________________________


Vietnam, China pledge to continue dialogue on maritime claims

Hanoi (AFP) - Vietnam and China pledged to continue negotiations on
border and maritime disputes following an ASEAN-China dialogue which
ended at the weekend, a report said Sunday.

The agreement followed four days of talks in the northern Chinese
resort of Huangshan between China and the Association of Southeast
Asian Nations, of which Vietnam is a member, the official Vietnam News
Agency said.

The two countries "agreed to promote talks in order to solve the land
border issue, demarcate the Tonkin Gulf and continue talks on issues
of territorial waters," the report said.

During his visit to Huangshan, Deputy Foreign Minister Vu Khoan met
with his Chinese counterpart Chen Jian to discuss bilateral issues.

Since Vietnam and China reestablished diplomatic relations in 1991
they have been holding expert level talks on three contested areas.

These are the Gulf of Tonkin, the South China Sea including the
disputed Paracel Islands and Spratly Islands, and their shared land
border in the north of Vietnam.

Earlier this month the two sides also held an expert level meeting in
Beijing to discuss competing claims in an area outside the Gulf of
Tonkin, where China began exploratory drilling last month.

An oil rig was positioned in a potentially gas-rich area lying 64.5
nautical miles off the Vietnamese coast and 71 nautical miles from
China's Hainan Island until the Chinese moved it on April 3.
                 ___________________________________


Vietnam to hold national elections July 20 

Hanoi (AFP) - Vietnam announced it would elect on July 20 its next
National Assembly, whose chief task will be to choose a new core
leadership, the official Vietnam News reported on Sunday.

The current National Assembly has passed a new law on the election of
deputies increasing the maximum number of representatives from 395 to
450, the Vietnam News Agency also reported.

Elections of national assembly deputies are held every five years
nationwide, with voting compulsory for anyone over the age of 18.

When the newly elected members of the National Assembly meet for their
first session in September one of their biggest tasks will be to
choose the country's leading triumvirate for the next five years.

The current positions are held by Do Muoi, 80, who is Communist Party
General Secretary, 76-year-old president Le Duc Anh, and Vo Van Kiet,
the 74-year-old prime minister.

The National Assembly meets for around one month twice annually. The
current sesssion opened on April 2 and is expected to end at the
beginning of May.

The next elected legislature, the 10th since the founding of Vietnam
in 1945, will include a majority of new faces, including an increase
in the number of non communist party representatives, Vu Mao, chairman
of the National Assembly Office told reporters last month.

The party representation, which now makes up 92 percent of delegates,
could fall to around 80 percent he said, while as much as 60 to 70
percent of present deputies will be replaced.

Many have indicated they will not stand for reelection because of the
increasingly onerous duties required of deputies, who are expected to
spend one third of their time on assembly duties.

The national lawmaking body, at one time a mere rubber stamp, has had
an increasingly heavy workload in recent years as Vietnam grapples
with putting in place a more transparent legal system.

A draft of the election law also contained an article that would allow
candidates to conduct their campaigns in newspapers and on television
and radio with a view to creating "more lively and democratic"
elections Mao said.

However official news reports did not indicate whether this clause was
maintained in the final draft of the new law.

The new law also enables candidates to nominate themselves, though all
National Assembly hopefuls will still need to be vetted by the Vietnam
Fatherland Front which is under direct control of the Communist Party
of Vietnam.

One National Assembly deputy who spoke to AFP noted a heated debate
over a proposed project to build 5 billion dollar north-south highway
during the current session of the assembly.

The feasibility of the project, of which Prime Minister Vo Van Kiet is
a staunch supporter, involves rebuilding the historic Ho Chi Minh
trail, and enlisting some 200,000 people per year based on a
compulsory contribution of 10 days' free labour, has been hotly
debated by deputies during the current session of the National
Assembly.

Many question the wisdom of building a second highway when Vietnam is
finding it difficult enough to secure funding to upgrade existing
National Highway Number One.