VN news (June 6)

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

Vietnam bank executives probed in debt scandal
Police say results of autopsy in Minh Phung inconclusive 
Cambodian king urges end to dispute with Vietnam
US envoy in pilgrimage to Vietnam war crash site
Vietnam to host regional talks on support for Cuba
Vietnam has 1,300 Agent Orange victims in Haiphong
Vietnamese Newspaper Highlights - June 05, 1997 
Payment "delayed" on Vietnam patrol boat deal
Australia Awards 560 Scholarships To Vietnamese people 

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Vietnam bank executives probed in debt scandal 

HANOI, June 6 (Reuter) - Two senior executives of Vietnam's state-owned
Vietcombank have been suspended from their posts because they were
responsible for loans to the debt-crippled Minh Phung and EPCO companies,
a bank official said on Friday. 

He said the Ho Chi Minh City branch's Deputy General Director, Nguyen Ngoc
Bich, and its Credit Department Deputy Manager, Pham Thanh Tung, would
face questioning by authorities over debts run up by the two firms. 

The two men were not sacked from the bank and police declined to comment
on whether they would be detained along with 23 people from Minh Phung and
EPCO who are suspected of fraud. 

Minh Phung, a garments-to-property conglomerate, defaulted on a loan of
about $17.1 million from Vietcombank. The loan was secured with steel and
other commodities, which were "borrowed" from EPCO but turned out to have
been already sold. 

That loan was just the tip of Minh Phung's massive debts, much of which
were run up by headlong investment in the country's slumping property
market. 

Newspaper reports put the company's debt mountain at some $370 million and
say that state-owned Incombank is owed the lion's share of that sum. 

However, foreign bankers believe the debt total is likely to be much
lower. 

Central bank governor Cao Si Kiem told the National Assembly recently that
Minh Phung's debts, in local currency and dollars, came to some $26
million, of which about $5 million was overdue. 

He said commercial banks had guaranteed $44.02 million of letters of
credit for Minh Phung and EPCO, of which $13.8 million was overdue. 

A senior executive of Minh Phung and former Vietcombank employee, Nguyen
Van Ha, was found dead in a machine-engine room on the roof of Incombank's
headquarters in Ho Chi Minh City last weekend. His head was slumped
against an electrical circuit board and metal wire had been tightened
around his neck. 

Police said they were still baffled by the circumstances of Ha's death and
have not ruled out either suicide or foul play. 

However, newspaper reports on Friday said police had found identical wire
at Ha's home and one quoted an investigator as saying that it was 80
percent likely that his death was a suicide. 
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Police say results of autopsy in Minh Phung inconclusive 

HANOI (AFP) - The Ho Chi Minh City police said Friday they had completed
an autopsy on the body of a vice finance director at Minh Phung Garment
Co. but had not yet determined the cause of death. 

A policeman in Ho Chi Minh City said by telephone that the investigation
team had not concluded whether Nguyen Van Ha had committed suicide or been
murdered. 

However the Thanh Nien newspaper quoted an expert on the Ho Chi Minh City
police investigation team who said there was a 95 percent probability that
Ha's death involved foul play. 

Ha's strangled and mutilated body was found last Saturday in a utility
shed on the roof of a bank to which he was personally responsible for
nearly 320 million dollars worth of company debts. 

Investigators are particularly interested in determining whether Ha was
considered a key witness in what could be Vietnam's biggest ever scandal,
and whether he was killed by a professional, the paper said. 

Earlier on Friday, officials at Vietcombank, where Ha had worked until
1995, said they had suspended two executives responsible for lending money
to Minh Phung and its affiliate companies. 

The two employees were Nguyen Ngoc Bich, deputy director of the Ho Chi
Minh City branch of Vietcombank and Pham Thanh Tung, assistant director of
the credit department, where Ha had also worked. 

As vice director of finance at Minh Phung, Ha had reportedly been left in
charge of dealing with the company's debts to Incombank after the
company's director, Tang Minh Phung, was arrested on charges of defrauding
another state owned bank, Vietcombank in late March. 

Ming Phung's troubles first surfaced in March after an affiliate company,
EPCO, defaulted on an 18 million dollar debt to the Bank for Foreign Trade
and Investment, or Vietcombank, Vietnam's largest state-owned bank. 

So far 23 people have been prosecuted in connection with the Minh Phung
case since March. 

Much of the investigation has focused on trying to assess a labyrinthine
company structure in which Minh Phung allegedly used more than 22
subsidiaries and associate companies to deceive bankers of its true
financial structure. 

Minh Phung is one of Vietnam's largest garment manufacturers with more
than 9,000 employees. Like many high flying private joint stock companies
it diversified into import-export and several property deals which have
gone sour. 
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Cambodian king urges end to dispute with Vietnam

PHNOM PENH, June 6 (Reuter) - Cambodian King Norodom Sihanouk on Friday
said his son's criticism of a Khmer-Vietnam friendship monument did not
serve the country's interests. 

Co-Premier Prince Norodom Ranariddh on Tuesday said the statue in Phnom
Penh had stood for too long and vowed to remove it if his royalist
FUNCINPEC party won elections next year. 

Ranariddh's comments came just days after a memorial to Vietnamese war
dead in the southern port of Sihanoukville was slightly damaged by a bomb
blast. 

Vietnam condemned the bomb explosion and called Ranariddh's comments
regrettable and offensive. 

The monuments in Phnom Penh and Sihanoukville were erected after Vietnam's
1978 invasion of Cambodia when Vietnamese forces and members of the
Cambodian opposition drove the brutal Khmer Rouge from power. 

Vietnamese forces remained in Cambodia until late 1989. 

King Sihanouk, who was asked by the staff of his monthly bulletin about
what they termed the "serious crisis" between Ranariddh and Vietnam,
suggested the issue was dividing people at a bad time. 

"In the interest of our relations with...Vietnam and to ease the minds of
our national community, (which is) already seriously divided, I wish only
that these sensitive questions were not brought up," he said. 

Many Cambodians harbour deep suspicions of their eastern neighbour.
Analysts say Ranariddh has seized on anti-Vietnamese sentiment to boost
his political position vis a vis co-Premier Hun Sen, with whom he shares
power in an increasingly acrimonious coalition government. 

Hun Sen fled to Vietnam when he broke with the Khmer Rouge in the
mid-1970s and returned with the Vietnamese invasion force in 1978. 

He went on to become premier of the Hanoi-backed government that ruled
until a 1991 peace pact officially ended the civil war and paved the way
for U.N.-sponsored polls in 1993. 
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U.S. envoy in pilgrimage to Vietnam war crash site

By Adrian Edwards

TRIEU SON, Vietnam, June 6 (Reuter) - Washington's first ambassador in
Hanoi, Pete Peterson, paid an emotional visit on Friday to a Vietnam War
excavation site and said the search for America's lost servicemen should
continue for 100 years. 

Peterson, a former fighter pilot and prisoner of war, peered into an
impact crater on a barren hillside where archaeologists and workers have
recovered suspected human remains and parts of an A1-H bomber downed
almost 32 years ago to the day. 

On June 10, 1965, the doomed plane swept across this remote area of
northern Vietnam's Thanh Hoa province together with eight others in a raid
against a power plant just across the valley from here, some 100 miles
(160 km) south of Hanoi. 

"It was downed on the second pass," said Master Sergeant Ronald Cline, a
member of the excavation team. 

Pointing to a small piece of the pilot's helmet among the remains, he
added: "When you find something like this you know the guy it belonged to
must have had a bad day." Peterson's visit to the crash site was his first
face-to-face experience since his arrival in May of the painstaking
process by which joint U.S. and Vietnamese teams are seeking to resolve
the fate of the 2,124 Americans listed as missing in action in Indochina. 

Vietnam's harsh tropical environment means that in many cases all that's
left of planes downed more than 20 years ago are tiny scraps of remains,
often no bigger than a thumb-nail. 

Searchers at the site marked Friday's occasion by handing Peterson a brick
from his former place of captivity in Vietnam, the infamous "Hanoi Hilton"
jail, mounted on a small wooden plinth. 

Peterson, moved by the gesture, thanked those involved, describing them as
"heroes of another generation". He then told reporters the search for
America's war dead ought to continue for 100 years. 

"This isn't something we're going to walk away from. This is a
commitment," he said. 

"It won't be done perhaps at the same level, but we're going to continue
to do this because it's part of history and we want to continue to make
the discoveries that's out there." The issue of missing American
servicemen from a war that ended more than 22 years ago is the United
States' foremost policy concern in Vietnam. 

It is expected to be raised in discussions later this month during a visit
by Secretary of State Madeleine Albright, the most senior U.S. official to
visit this communist country since diplomatic ties were normalised two
years ago. 

U.S. officials say Vietnam has cooperated in the search. 

But in a meeting earlier this week Communist Party Secretary General,
80-year-old Do Muoi, told Peterson that he would like to see America do
more to help Vietnam find its own missing. 

State television in Vietnam regularly shows aged photos of young
servicemen who have not been seen by their families in more than two
decades and are among some 300-400,000 people here listed as missing in
action. 
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Vietnam to host regional talks on support for Cuba

HANOI, June 6 (Reuter) - Vietnam will host a conference of activists from
Asia-Pacific nations next week to discuss support for Cuba in the face of
U.S. trade sanctions, the union of friendship organisations in Hanoi said
on Friday. 

The Vietnam Union of Peace, Solidarity and Friendship Organisations
conference on June 12 and 13 will bring together more than 100 people from
14 countries. 

An official at the non-governmental organisation said delegates would
focus on the U.S. embargo on trade with Cuba under the Helms-Burton law. 

Communist Vietnam, one of Cuba's closest allies, has added its voice to
international criticism of the sanctions, arguing that Helms-Burton runs
contrary to international law. 

Cuban Foreign Minister Roberto Robaina said in an interview last Sunday
that the real intention of the law was to "sow terror, chaos, hunger and
sicknesses in our country and among our people; to destroy our nation, its
independence and sovereignty, and to reestablish neocolonial control". 
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Vietnam has 1,300 Agent Orange victims in Haiphong

Hanoi (AFP) - The northern port city of Haiphong has more than 1,300
victims of Agent Orange, a chemical defoliant used by the United States
against Vietnam during the war, a report said Friday. 

An investigation into war victims found 1,301 cases of whom 33 people have
died, The Saigon Times Daily said. 

The chemical reportedly caused many people to be handicapped or infertile,
and most of those affected in Haiphong were mainly war veterans and youths
who spent time fighting in the south during the Vietnam war. 

The newspaper also said 950 people reported that their children had birth
defects and 820 said their children had deformities. 

American forces blanketed parts of the country in defoliants to deprive
Vietnamese guerrillas of their jungle hideouts in the south, but many
civilians were affected. 

Vietnam says two million people were affected by the spraying and that
50,000 children have been born with deformities. 

The US military disputes these figures and insists that Agent Orange was
mostly harmless although a scientific consensus is building on the toxic
effects of dioxins. 
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Vietnamese Newspaper Highlights - June 05, 1997 

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

NHAN DAN:

- The Vietnam Tea Corporation in the first five months exported 2,022
tonnes of tea to European, American and Asian countries, an increase of
over three times compared with the same period of last year. 

- The United Nations Development Programme (UNDP) has helped Vietnam to
conduct 43 projects on the environmental protection in Vietnam. 

VIETNAM NEWS: 

- Vietnam has made the development of environment protection into a
national economic target for the period from now until the year 2000.
Under the action programme, Vietnam strives to provide safe water to 85
percent of Vietnam's rural population and increase nation-wide forest area
to 40 percent by 2000. 

HANOI MOI: 

- The Swedish International Development Cooperation Agency (SIDA) will
provide US$400,000 to the Hanoi Architect-in-chief's office to help
preserve and develop the "36 old streets quarter" in the capital. 

- The government has allowed conditional exemptions on the newly imposed
ban on imported motor vehicles. 
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Australia Awards 560 Scholarships To Vietnamese people 

Hanoi (VNA) - Vietnam highly appreciates the precious assistance of the
Australian Government in human resources training, said Prof. Vu Ngoc Hai,
Deputy Minister of Education and Training. 

He was speaking at a meeting of the Australia- Vietnam development
cooperation programme on human resources development jointly organised
here last Saturday by the Australian Embassy and Vietnamese relevant
agencies. 

By May 1997, 560 Vietnamese had received Australian government
scholarships to study and improve professional skills in Australia.
According to an Australian source, this year, 204 Vietnamese students are
expected to graduate from university and 200 Vietnamese officials and
students will be offered scholarships to study in Australia. 

Next year 150 Australian Development Scholarships (ADS) will be offered to
Vietnamese students to study at both an undergraduate and postgraduate
level, and vocational training in Australia. Of these scholarships, 70
percent will be given to people from the State-owned sector, 15 percent
from 22 poor provinces, and the remaining 15 percent from the
private-economic sector. 

By the end of this year, the Vietnam-Australian English Language,
Technical Training and Resources Project will take effect in Vietnam. 

The project will help train English-language teachers, and provide
short-term English language training courses for the Australian
Development Scholarship recipients. The project will last five years. 
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Payment "delayed" on Vietnam patrol boat deal

HANOI, June 6 (Reuter) - Vietnam's leading commercial bank was asked by
the government to delay a payment on a letter of credit that was opened
for a $5.6-million patrol boat deal with an Australian shipbuilder, an
official at the bank said on Friday. 

In recent months, several Vietnamese banks have refused to honour loan
guarantees made to foreign companies and banks, saying they were waiting
for their own debtors to pay up first. 

Reports of default have raised questions about the health of the country's
banking system and dented its reputation abroad. 

The managing director of Brisbane Ship Constructions Pty Ltd, which was
commissioned to build four coastal patrol vessels for Vietnam's General
Department of Customs, confirmed that there had been a "delay". 

However, he denied that state-owned Vietcombank had defaulted on its
contract. 

"There has been a delay, but there's certainly been no defaults or any
dishonouring of anything as far as we are concerned...there's been a delay
but who is to blame I could not say", Michael Hollis told Reuters. 

He declined to give details of the contract or the delay. 

The Vietcombank official, who requested anonymity, said the Ministry of
Finance had sent a letter to the bank asking it not to make a second-stage
payment, which fell due about 15 days ago. A first payment had already
been made on time, he said. 

"The Ministry of Finance sent a letter to Vietcombank asking Vietcombank
not to pay right now," he said. 

He said the ministry had made its request because there had been a
procedural error, but said the money would be sent out soon. 

Officials at the Finance Ministry declined to comment on why Vietcombank
had been asked to withhold payment beyond the scheduled date. 
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