VN News (Apr. 24, 1997)

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

April 24: 10 Vietnamese arrested in China while trying to sneak into Hong Kong 
April 24: Some 16,000 Vietnamese could get UN compensation for Gulf War 
April 24: Byelorussia, Vietnam to sign economic cooperation accord.
April 24: Teenager executed in Vietnam for killing policeman 
April 24: Vietnam hails strengthening ties with Belarus 
April 24: Laos Repatriates 493 Remains


10 Vietnamese arrested in China while trying to sneak into
Hong Kong 

HONG KONG (AFP) - Ten Vietnamese men have been arrested in southern
China while trying to sneak into Hong Kong to look for jobs, it was
reported Thursday.

The 10 Vietnamese, aged between 20 and 40, were held in coastal
Wuchuan city in Guangdong province, while preparing to sail to Hong
Kong, the Hong Kong branch of China News Service said.

They told Chinese authorities that they paid 10 billion dong (800 US
dollars) to human smugglers to take them to Hong Kong where they were
promised work, the report said.

The Vietnamese illegal immigrant left Nan Dinh in north Vietnam for
Hong Kong on April 12.
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Some 16,000 Vietnamese could get UN compensation for Gulf War

Hanoi (dpa) - Some 16,000 Vietnamese workers are in line to receive
compensation from the United Nations for having to leave Iraq during
the 1991 Gulf War, according to a local report Thursday.

A Hanoi government agency handling Vietnamese workers abroad reported
they had been contacted by the United Security Council after a
recently completed screening processed accepted the eligbility of
Vietnamese workers.

Money has already been transfered for a first group of 378 workers
from Hanoi's Ministry of Water Conservancy, the official Vietnam News
reported.

It is unclear how many Vietnamese recipients for compensation there
would be apparently because many applications are still being
considered.

According to the Ministry of Labour, War Invalids and Social Affairs
(MOLISA) 15,992 dossiers of Vietnamese working at the time in Iraq
were submitted to the UN by 1993.

In April 1991 the United Nations Security Council declared there
should be compensation for governments, individuals and companies, who
were forced to leave Iraq during the run-up to or during the
hostilities.

The Gulf War pitted Iraqi leader Saddam Hussein against a U.S.-led
international force assembled to roll-back Iraq's earlier invasion of
its oil-rich neighbor Kuwait.

Money from the UN Compensation Committee is to be paid to, and managed
by governments, who are supposed to follow guidelines.

These include no alteration in the names or order of the receipients,
the report said.

Governments are also supposed to make sure that they directly receive
the correct compensation amount and that no more than 1.5 per cent is
deducted to cover the government's administration fee.

MOLISA officials were not immediately available for further
clarifications.
                 ___________________________________


Byelorussia, Vietnam to sign economic cooperation accord.

Hanoi (Itar-Tass) - Byelorussian President Alexander Lukashenko, on
his first ever visit to Vietnam, will sign on Thursday a friendship
and cooperation agreement with his Vietnamese counterpart Le Du'c Anh,
sources in the visiting Byelorussian delegation told Itar-Tass.

The agreement on friendship and cooperation and a treaty to avoid
double taxation will be signed after a meeting between Lukashenko and
Vietnamese Prime Minister Vo Van Kiet and chairman of Vietnam's
National Assembly Nong Du'c Manh.

Lukashenko and the Vietnamese President called for scaling up economic
cooperation and boosting trade between their states at a meeting
earlier on Thursday.

The presidents also praised the way the economic relations between
Byelorussia and Vietnam had been progressing, Lukashenko's press
secretary Valery Tolkachev told Tass.

Byelorussia attaches great significance to the Vietnamese market, and
we are interested in promoting our industrial products in Vietnam,
Tolkachev said.

Vietnam exports to Byelorussia rice, coffee, tea, natural rubber and
consumer goods. Byelorussia delivers to Vietnam industrial goods,
including heavy-duty lorries, motorcycles and tractors.

In 1996, two-way trade between Byelorussia and Vietnam totalled 14.5
million USD, up some 2 million from the previous year.

On Friday, the Byelorussian delegation is due to leave for Vietnam's
largest economic centre Ho Chi Minh.
                 ___________________________________


Teenager executed in Vietnam for killing policeman 

Hanoi (Reuter) - A Vietnamese teenager who was found guilty of
stabbing a policeman to death with a butcher's knife after a drinking
binge has been executed by firing squad, officials said on Thursday.

A court official said President Le Duc Anh had turned down a final
appeal for clemency from 19-year-old Duong The Tung and he was
executed at dawn on Wednesday on the outskirts of Hanoi.

During his trial in April last year, the state prosecutor said Tung
and about 15 other youths had between them consumed 48 cans of beer on
the evening of the crime.

Some of the group later got into a dispute with a trishaw driver. Tung
struck the driver and two passing motorcyclists with his knife and
then turned on a policeman who tried to intervene. The policeman died
on the way to hospital.

Communist Vietnam has taken a strong stand in the past year against
organised and violent crime, which many in the government link to the
country's increasingly freewheeling society and rapid growth in youth
unemployment.

Vietnamese courts sentenced more than 100 people to death in 1995, the
latest year for which figures have been released.
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Vietnam hails strengthening ties with Belarus 

HANOI (Reuter) - Vietnam rolled out the red carpet on Thursday for
visiting Belarus President Alexander Lukashenko, who was due to sign
bilateral treaties with the communist country on cooperation and
avoidance of double taxation.

Leading newspapers carried identical photo portraits of Lukashenko,
who arrived in Hanoi on Wednesday evening, and the party daily said in
an enthusiastic editorial that his visit marked a new step in ties
between the two countries.

``The Vietnamese people wish President Lukashenko's visit success,
helping to boost friendship and cooperation between the two countries
for peace, stability, cooperation and development in the region and
the world,'' the daily Nhan Dan said.

Lukashenko met President Le Duc Anh behind closed doors before the
signing ceremony for the two treaties and a meeting with Prime
Minister Vo Van Kiet.

Two-way trade between Vietnam and Belarus in 1996 came to $14.56
million. Belarus ranks 27th among Vietnam's foreign investors with a
single project, a $38 million-rubber processing plant in the southern
port of Vung Tau.
                 ___________________________________


Laos Repatriates 493 Remains 

Hanoi (AP) -- More than two decades after 493 Vietnamese were killed
during fighting in Laos, their bodies were finally brought home in a
convoy of trucks.

Peasants, villagers and local leaders flowers and wreaths in hand
lined the roads of northern Vietnam's Nghe An province for the
procession, the People's Army newspaper reported today. It did not say
when this occurred.

It was the single-largest repatriation of the remains of Vietnamese
lost in Laos and it came after a yearlong search for their bodies.

The soldiers were buried during a recent ceremony in a special
military cemetery in Nghe An, just across the border with Laos, the
newspaper said.

Vietnam sent hundreds of thousands of troops to fight alongside
communist Pathet Lao guerrillas during Laos' civil war in the 1960s
and 1970s. Thousands of the soldiers were killed in the conflict, a
sideshow to the larger Vietnam War.

Vietnam continues to search for about 300,000 soldiers reported
missing in action after four decades of wars.