From: mdo@socrates.umd.edu ("Mike T. Do")
Newsgroups: soc.culture.vietnamese
Subject: [NEWS] VIETNAM EMBARGO MAY BE RELAXED
Date: 19 Nov 92 00:30:44 GMT
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From Washington Times(11/17/92)
By Kathleen Callo
REUTERS NEWS AGENCY

HANOI-Sen. John Kerry indicated yesterday that President Bush might soon
ease Washington's longstanding embargo against Vietnam in response to help
from Hanoi in accounting for U.S. servicemen missing from the Vietnam War.
     The Massachusetts Democrat, who heads a Senate committee on MIAs, told
reporters on his arrival in Hanoi that Vietnam had greatly increased
cooperation in the past year and appeared ready to do more.
     "It's my sense that the president may be in a position, if we get
adquate cooperation and if we can speed this process up, to make a positive
move with respect to the embargo," Mr. Kerry said.
     He said he felt the United States, by "moving on the embargo," would be
able to speed up joint efforts with the Vietnamese to answer questions about
missing Americans.
     Mr. Kerry told Vietnamese Deputy Foreign Le Mai he had a letter from Mr.
Bush for President Le Duc Anh.  He said it was the first time an American
president had set a direct message to a Vietnamese president since the war
ended in 1975.
     Mr. Kerry gave no details of the letter but said he would meet with Mr.
Anh, Foreign Minisster Nguyen Manh Cam and several other senior officials
during the three-day visit.
     He said Hanoi already had told him it was ready to hand over certain
classified Vietnamese documents that the Senate committee had requested in
its search for answers about what happened to some servicemen.
    There has been speculation in Washington recently that Mr. Bush, whose
administration began moving in 1991 toward normalizing ties with Hanoi and a
lifting of the embargo, might ease or even lift those sanctions before his
term ends Jan. 20.
    Rumors spread over the years by some Americans that missing servicemen
are still being held prisoner in Indochiina have helped block normalization
and lifting the embargo.
    Mr. Kerry said his committee, created a year ago, had found no conclusive
evidence to substantiate those rumors.
    "If the cooperation is forthcoming, I am confident the president will
want to reciprocate in some way.  I can't tell you what that is.  But we are
definitely on a road here, as the president has said many times, leading
toward normalization," he said.
    Washington has made Vietnamese cooperation in accounting for MIAs one
condition for normalization and an end to the embargo, which was imposed on
Hanoi in 1964 and extended to a reunified Vietnam when the communists won the
war.
    U.S. experts who have spent the last four years doing painstaking
investigations here say they have found evidence to prove or indicate that
servicemen listed by Washington as "presumed dead but unaccounted for" died
in the war.
    Washington list 2,265 Americans as unaccounted for in Indochina.



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