VN news (May 7)

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

May 07: Vietnamese Newspaper Highlights - May 07, 1997 
May 07: Vietnam to send large delegation to Cuban youth festival
May 07: Vietnam, Thailand To Establish Joint Sea Patrol
May 07: ''Oily Ghost'' serial rapist in Vietnam gets 17 years
May 07: Hanoi and Washington have to make up for lost time, says Premier
May 07: Vietnamese foreign minister in North Korea 


Vietnamese Newspaper Highlights - May 07, 1997 

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

NHAN DAN:

1. In the first four months of this year, Vietnam exported 270,000
tonnes of coffee, of which 60 per cent were exported to the United
States.

HANOI MOI:

1. The Australian government is providing another US$10 million for an
English language training project as part of Australia's commitment to
development co-operation in Vietnam.

2. FAO is to assist Vietnam in the formulation of legal policies
covering the forestry sector.

VIETNAM NEWS:

1. Managed Information Technology Solutions from Australia will bid to
join an electricity management project for the central part of
Vietnam.

2. Domestically-made goods starting to get market respect.
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Vietnam to send large delegation to Cuban youth festival

Hanoi (dpa) - Vietnam will send more than 120 young people to
participate in the 14th World Youth and Students Festival to be held
in Cuba in late July, according to an official report released
Thursday.

The last festival of this kind was held in the North Korean capital of
Pyongyang in 1989, when 16,000 youth delegates from 180 countries
attended, the official Vietnam News reported.

A committee of Communist Party members has been set up to select the
youth, who are also to include workers, farmers and artists.

They will be ``required to have comprehensive knowledge of policy,
culture, economics, society, science and technology and be high
achievers in their respective fields,'' the paper reported.

The purpose of Vietnam's participation was ``to win more support from
the world's youth and students for Vietnam's renovation cause,'' it
added.

Cuba and Vietnam have very close ideological ties forged from Cuban
leader Fidel Castro's vigorous support for Hanoi during the Vietnam
war.

Castro won the enduring appreciation of Vietnamese leaders and much of
the public by being the only head of state to visit the battlefront in
the closing years of the war.
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Vietnam, Thailand To Establish Joint Sea Patrol 

HANOI (VNA) - Vietnam and Thailand have met in Bangkok, Thailand to
officially discuss the establishment of joint sea patrols and naval
liaison points to maintain sea peace and order.

The two sides agreed to start joint inspection tours in overlapping
areas in the Thai gulf in October.

A sub-committee will be set up to draft details on patrol activities
including solutions to settle the two sides' ships infiltrating in
overlapping areas.

Thailand plans to complete the first draft to be sent to Vietnam for
consideration next month. The two countries' naval forces are
scheduled to meet in September this year.
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''Oily Ghost'' serial rapist in Vietnam gets 17 years

Hanoi (dpa) - A serial rapist who greased his body with used
motorcycle oil and streaked naked when committing his crimes was
sentenced to 17 years in jail by a Vietnamese court, officials said
Thursday.

The People's Court in southern Long An province found Lai Van Trieu,
37, guilty of 16 rapes and more than a dozen burglaries during the
course of roughly a year before his arrest last June.

Trieu previously served 10 1/2 years in prison for raping a colleague
at a state firm where he was also convicted of embezzling money.

Local residents of the two districts where he carried out his crimes
nicknamed him the ``Oily Ghost'' for the apparition-like figure he cut
and they said was desperate for human love.

But not everyone was satisfied with the justice he received at the
trial that ended in late April but was only reported locally.

``I am not satisfied with the sentence at all,'' said Triuen Ngoc Hoa,
the secretary of the trial in a telephone interview.

``He was a rampaging beast ... and the ghost of every woman's
nightmare would be extinguished from existence completely.''
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Hanoi and Washington have to make up for lost time, says
Premier 

HANOI (AFP) - Vietnam and the United States should "make up for lost
time", Vietnam's premier Vo Van Kiet said Wednesday, two days before
the arrival of US Ambassador Douglas "Pete" Peterson.

Peterson is expected to arrive on Friday, nearly two years after
normalization of diplomatic ties and 22 years after the end of the
Vietnam War, in which nearly 60,000 Americans and more than three
million Vietnamese died.

Expressing his desire to see complete cooperation between Vietnam and
the United States, Kiet said the "two governments must try to develop
as quickly as possible bilateral relations in order to make up for
lost time," the communist party daily Nhan Dan reported.

Speaking on Tuesday to outgoing Charge d'Affaires Desaix Anderson who
leaves Vietnam on Wednesday, the premier said "the most important
thing today is to build mutual knowledge and confidence in order to
expand economic, commercial, and scientific-technological
cooperation."

Anderson said he "regretted that economic and commercial relations had
not yet been normalised," the paper reported.

He said he hoped Vietnam would respond favourably to the text of a
draft trade agreement which the United States negotiating team
delivered to the ministry of trade last month.

Anderson thanked Vietnam for its cooperation in the search and
recovery of the remains of American GIs listed as missing in action
(MIA) during the war, of whom 1589 are not accounted for.

The MIA issue remains a top priority in Washington, and together with
moving ahead on economic normalisation, will be Peterson's chief
concerns when he arrives.
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Vietnamese foreign minister in North Korea 

HANOI (AFP) - Vietnamese Foreign Minister Nguyen Manh Cam was in North
Korea Wednesday to discuss trade and other issues and would head for
Japan at the weekend, an official source said.

Cam will be in the isolated North until Saturday at the invitation of
his counterpart Kim Yong-Nam to discuss developing trade and "regional
and international questions," the Vietnamese foreign ministry said,
without elaborating.

Vietnam turned down a request by North Korea to deliver 50,000 tonnes
of rice to the famine-hit country when the North's Deputy Prime
Minister Kong Chin The visited here in early April.

Cam's visit to Tokyo from Sunday until Wednesday will be dominated by
talks on economic cooperation between Vietnam and Japan, the third
largest foreign investor, the source said.

He will also attend a seminar on "the future of Asia" organized by the
daily Nihon Keizai.
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