VN news (June 13)

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

Vietnam buys diesel for power generation
Protest in rural vietnam prompts official probe
Survey paints sorry picture of Vietnam state firms
Vietnam instructs press to celebrate war, ideology
U.N. helps to test Vietnamese addiction treatment
Fifty six more HIV cases found in Vietnam
Vietnam's top leaders to make way for fresh blood
Traffic carnage increases in Vietnam as officials mull crackdown
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Vietnam buys diesel for power generation-traders

SINGAPORE, June 13 (Reuter) - Vietnam has bought three spot diesel cargoes
totalling 66,000 tonnes in the face of a possible power shortage, industry
sources said on Friday. 

Vietnam's state electricity monopoly said earlier this week there could be
widespread power outages within weeks unless water levels in hydro-power
dams increased. 

A senior official of Electricity of Vietnam (EVN) told Reuters that EVN
was using diesel generators and other machinery to maintain supplies to
most areas of the country. 

On Friday, oil traders said the diesel cargoes purchased by state-owned
Vietnam National Petroleum Import-Export Corp (Petrolimex) were for
delivery in the second half of June. 

They said the diesel was to help cover the power shortages. 

Vietnam buys most of its diesel through term contracts and it is very
unusal for Vietnam to purchase diesel in the spot market, they said. 

The 1.0-percent sulphur diesel cargoes were sold at about 70 cents over
spot Singapore quotes on a cost-and-freight basis to Ho Chi Minh City. 

Traders said the purchases by Petrolimex could also be partly attributed
to a decline in second quarter deliveries of diesel, compared to the first
quarter, in its quarterly tenders. 

Petrolimex cut purchases to 170,000 tonnes of diesel for delivery in the
second quarter from 207,000 tonnes for the first quarter. 

Vietnam is expected to issue a tender within the next two weeks to
purchase petroleum products for delivery in the third quarter, traders
said. 

Petrolimex also has a two-year term contract with Kuwait Petroleum Corp
for the purchase of diesel and jet fuel in 1997 and 1998. 

The contract is for the import of 700,000 tonnes of diesel and
120,000-130,000 tonnes of jet fuel. 

Vietnam plans to produce 19.7 billion kilowatt hours of power in 1997. 

The latest government data shows that hydro-power generated 71 percent of
power in 1995 and thermal generation, including coal, oil and diesel was a
combined 29 percent. 
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Protest in rural Vietnam prompts official probe

HANOI, June 13 (Reuter) - A government official said on Friday that a
state team had been sent to report on public grievances around Vietnam
following a rare protest by villagers over corruption. 

The official at the State Inspectorate gave few details but said the
delegation had completed a tour of northern Vietnam and was now visiting
southern Vietnam to report on how province and city authorities were
handling local complaints. 

A state-controlled newspaper reported in its Thursday edition that the
probe was aimed at assuring control over grievances about official
corruption, smuggling, disputes over land and property, and authoritarian
attitudes. 

Eyewitnesses and others say some 3,000 people have been protesting in Thai
Binh province, some 70 km (45 miles)  southeast of Hanoi, for the past
month. 

Local people from some four communes are said to have occupied an area
outside the People's Committee in the district capital and held local
leaders as hostage to negotiations. 

However, there have been no reports of violence. 

Reports of protests and demonstrations in Vietnam are extremely rare. But
political sources said on Friday there had been more than 30 recent
incidents in northern Vietnam and in provinces around Ho Chi Minh City. 

The government barred foreign correspondents earlier this year from
travelling to a village outside Hanoi where hundreds of people had taken
part in a protest over the construction of a luxury golf course. 

Overseas journalists are also subject to a five-day rule on seeking
government permission for trips outside the capital. It was therefore not
immediately possible to verify the reports from Thai Binh. 

Public grievances in Vietnam are often related to problems over land-use
rights -- a complicated issue in a country where socialist policies
dictate that all land belongs to the state. 

The Thai Binh protest is reported to have been sparked by alleged official
corruption. 
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Survey paints sorry picture of Vietnam state firms

HANOI, June 13 (Reuter) - Vietnam's flagship state sector is among the
most inefficient in the world, uses equipment that belongs in museums and
suffers an almost total lack of automation, a government survey has found. 

The official Saigon Times Daily reported on Friday that a Central Economic
Management Institute survey had found that equipment in the rail
transport, ship-building and mechanical engineering industries was four to
five generations old. 

It said more than 96 percent of state owned enterprises (SOEs) under
central government control had yet to be automated, while in industry
managed by local provinces working conditions at 74 percent of firms were
"unsophisticated". 

Vietnam's communist government announced at a party congress last year
that the state sector would continue to play a leading role in the economy
over the next five-year period, despite growing competition from foreign
and private firms. 

The policy, which dates from the days of Vietnam's reliance on a
Soviet-style command-led economy, met with consternation among economists
who say the sector is grossly inefficient and would be best nudged towards
retirement. 

The Central Economic Management report appeared to concur with that view.
It said costs and sales prices of goods produced by the sector, including
cement, steel, fertilizer, sugar and paper were higher than those of
imported goods. 

Labour productivity was rated at just 10 percent of the world average in
the vegetable oil industry and 30 percent in the textile, garments, paper
and plastics sectors. 

Vietnam has more than 7,000 state-owned firms. 
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Vietnam instructs press to celebrate war, ideology

HANOI, June 13 (Reuter) - Vietnamese journalists have been told to
highlight events glorifying wartime victory and Marxist ideology, but also
to criticise the negative effects of the market economy, a state daily
said on Friday. 

The Hanoi Moi newspaper reported a speech to domestic media on Thursday by
a senior party official, Nguyen Phu Trong, who listed a series of events
this year for which the media were required to fulfill their prime duty as
an organ of state propaganda. 

But in an apparent sign of the times, he said Vietnam's journalists should
also "actively criticise negative phenomena, such as corruption,
bureaucracy, bribery, wastefulness, the appropriation of socialist
property, drug addiction and degenerate lifestyles". 

The list amounts to problems often cited as being the negative side of
Vietnam's free-market policies. 

Although still staunchly communist, Vietnam's government dropped orthodox
Soviet principles of a command-led economy in 1986 and introduced
capitalist-style reforms. 

The result was a spectacular economic liftoff. But signs over the past 18
months of a downturn have fuelled a long-standing debate over the merits
of the policy. 

Vietnam's media operate under tight state controls, where editors-in-chief
are held personally responsible for output. 

Despite the restrictions, the number of newspapers and periodicals
available has expanded rapidly in recent years. 

Trong's list of events for journalists to highlight included July's
National Assembly elections, the birth anniversaries of several late party
officials, the 25th anniversary of the 1972 Vietnam War Christmas bombing
campaign and the anniversary of Russia's October Revolution. 
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U.N. helps to test Vietnamese addiction treatment

By Evelyn Leopold

UNITED NATIONS, June 12 (Reuter) - The United Nations is stepping up
testing of an herbal medicine that Vietnamese doctors believe can cure
heroin, opium or cocaine addiction in anywhere from three days to about a
month. 

Roy Morey, the Washington director of the U.N. Development Programme
(UNDP), told a news conference on Thursday the medicine, known as Heantos
and containing 13 traditional herbs, had been already been tested on 3,000
Vietnamese addicts. 

It is taken in liquid doses for three to five days and then in tablet form
for another month. UNDP announced last month in Hanoi that it was
contributing $500,000 to the project. 

The trials in Vietnam have shown a high degree of success, with only about
a 30 percent recidivism rate, and side effects have been minimal. But
Morey said full testing would "require another two years or so." 

He said Vietnamese scientists had appealed to UNDP for funds and technical
advice, aiming to conduct further trials "in an internationally recognised
way" and see whether the treatment could be tested elsewhere in the world. 

Follow-up studies are being conducted in both Vietnam and the United
States by the Vietnamese government and the Johns Hopkins University
School of Medicine in Baltimore. 

A group of Vietnamese experts will visit Washington late this month to
meet their counterparts at Johns Hopkins and probably U.S. congressmen. 

Dr. Lutz Armand Bahr of UNDP, who spoke about the drug on Tuesday in
Copenhagen, said the herbal cocktail had been developed by Vietnamese
specialist Dr. Trang Khuong Dan, who had deliberately become a heroin
addict after his brother died of a drug overdose. 

Morey said applications would be submitted to the Food and Drug
Administration in Washington for clinical tests that Johns Hopkins may
want to be carry out in the United States. 

Vietnam's long land border and coastline make the country an easy transit
route for drug traffickers. The government has reduced domestic
cultivation of opium poppies, the source of heroin, to between 10 and 15
tons a year, compared with 2,000 tons or more in Burma. 

Estimates of the cost of drug abuse in the United States range from $70
billion to $80 billion a year for treatment, crime associated with drug
addiction and the cost of AIDS, which can be transmitted by drug users
sharing needles. 
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Fifty six more HIV cases found in Vietnam: report 

HANOI (AFP) - At least 56 more cases of HIV infections have been uncovered
in Vietnam during the first five months of 1997, a report said Friday. 

The new cases bring the total number of people detected positive for the
Human Immuno-deficiency Virus throughout Vietnam so far to 5,782, the Quan
Doi Nhan Dan daily said citing figures from the National AIDS Prevention
Committee. 

Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City are reportedly the two cities with the highest
number of HIV cases. 

Male HIV carriers account for 83 per cent of all cases detected so far,
most of them drug addicts, it said. 

But international Aids workers say detection figures are misleading
because testing has focused on prostitutes and drug addicts. 

According to a recent World Health Organization report, Vietnam could have
as many as 350,000 people infected with HIV-AIDS by the end of the decade. 
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Vietnam's top leaders to make way for fresh blood 

By Frederik Balfour

Hanoi (AFP) - Vietnam's top three leaders, Communist Party General
Secretary Do Muoi, President Le Duc Anh and Prime Minister Vo Van Kiet
will vacate their posts within the next few months, paving the way for
fresh blood, a well informed source said on Friday. 

The source told AFP that the names of 80-year-old Muoi, 76-year-old Anh
and 75-year old Kiet have not been included on a list of candidates for
the National Assembly elections to be held on July 20 approved by the
Communist Party Central Committee which is holding a 10 day plenum that
began Monday. 

The fact that the three leaders will not seek to renew their mandate as
deputies to the National Assembly implies that they will vacate their
posts, the source said. 

Both the president and prime minister must also be members of the National
Assembly according to the constitution. Although the communist party
secretary position need not sit on the assembly, historically this has
always been the case. 

By vacating their posts, the three leaders will make room for a younger
team, though observers say that the new troika will be chosen to maintain
the current balance between reformists and hardliners. 

Although the names of the three will not be made public for several
months, having finally settled the question of succession, the ruling
communist party can focus its energy on decision making, a European
diplomat said. 

The question of succession has raged within the corridors of power for
more than 18 months, and the country's reforms have slowed as a result. 

Vietnam has come under increasing pressure by the World Bank and
International Monetary Fund agencies to speed up reforms especially in the
state sector, the diplomat said. 

The posts of president and prime minister will be known by September 20,
the latest possible date for the National Assembly to meet. 

The two front runners for the position of president are Foreign Minister
68 year old Nguyen Manh Cam and the chairman of the National Assembly, 57
year old Nong Duc Manh, with Cam looking the stronger of the two. 

The constitution stipulates that the national lawmaking body must convene
within 60 days of the election of a new legislature, which takes place on
July 20. Elections occur every five years. 

It is possible however, that the National Assembly could convene soon
after the July elections so that the positions of president and prime
minister, which must be ratified by the National Assembly, can be made
public at an earlier date. 

Observers agree that Kiet has been successful in ensuring that his post
will be filled by current deputy prime minister, 64 year old Phan Van
Khai. Khai is a southerner from the same reformist camp as Kiet. 

According to the source, the party is likely to hold a "national
conference" before the end of the year to officially ratify Muoi's
successor, Le Kha Phieu. 

At 66, Phieu is current chief of the army's political department and
widely regarded as a communist hardliner. 

The position of the party general secretary is not a governmental post and
thus must be decided by the party, not the National Assembly. And although
the constitution does not stipulate that the party secretary must be a
member of the National Assembly, historically this has been the case. 

The party failed to reach a consensus during its five-yearly congress held
last July, but it has been generally agreed that the top three, who came
to power at roughly the same time, should also vacate their posts at the
same time also. 

Observers say the presidential post would assume a more honorary title, as
neither candidate would bring to the job as broad a power base as that
enjoyed by Anh, who holds the title of general and has the backing of the
army. 

While prime minister Kiet is still extremely active and enjoy's widespread
public support for his role as a reformist, president Anh suffered a
debilitating stroke last November and has since only served as president
in a limited capacity. 
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Traffic carnage increases in Vietnam as officials mull crackdown 

Hanoi (dpa) - More than 2,463 Vietnamese have died in traffic accidents
since the beginning of the year, according to an official report Friday,
prompting authorities to consider more serious measures to curb the
carnage. 

The latest figures - compiled over the first five months of the year -
were released at an three-day seminar organised by the police and traffic
control officials, reported the official Vietnam News. 

The new figures show that more than 16 Vietnamese are dying a day on the
road and more than 9,182 others were injured. 

An earlier report indicated traffic casualties had increased more than 25
per cent over figures from the previous year. 

Reported traffic accidents have been increasing by about 2,000 each year
since 1990, reflecting a dramatic increase in motorised traffic, according
to the latest report. 

Another factor is the general lawlessness that prevails on Vietnamese
roads, where virtually no one has been properly licensed. 

Widely trumpeted efforts by authorities to curb the carnage have so far
been ineffective but delegates to the ongoing seminar have recommended a
series of new measures to control the problem. 

These include mandatory driving tests for all drivers, intensive road
patrols and severe punishments for "deliberate violators" of regulations,
said the report. 
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