From: 71054.266@CompuServe.COM (TT)
Newsgroups: soc.culture.vietnamese
Subject: [NEWS] VN looks to US for economic break
Date: 12 Aug 92 18:24:33 GMT
Organization: Saigon.COM Public Access UNIX(tm), Sunnyvale CA  (408)739-1520


Reut09:09 08-12
 VIETNAM LOOKS TO OLD U.S. FOE FOR ECONOMIC BREAK
    By Kathleen Callo
    KHE SANH, Vietnam, Reuter - There is little evidence in Khe
Sanh nowadays of the fighting that raged here between U.S.
soldiers and Vietnamese communist forces in 1967 and 1968.
    Holes in the red dirt pockmark one part of this central
Vietnamese valley a few miles from Laos, surrounded by mountains
and once an important U.S. Marine garrison.
    Vietnamese scrap metal scavengers dig ditches in search of
anything from American mortar shells to wristwatches to vehicles
buried by the bombing.
    ``There are many old mines. Mines have killed about 100
people,'' says Nguyen Van Thuan, a 28-year-old scavenger armed
with a shovel and a metal rod for probing the earth.
    ``We're not afraid of the mines. People know where they are
and are used to them,'' he said.
    Across the windswept stretch that was once a U.S. airstrip,
some of his colleagues are unearthing rusty casings of 105-mm
shells.
    A cement memorial marker placed there by the Hanoi
government says victorious North Vietnamese troops in 1968
turned Khe Sanh into a ``Dien Bien Phu for the U.S.'' -- a
reference to the northern valley where the Vietnamese defeated
French colonial forces in 1954.
    Vast stores of equipment, weapons and vehicles left behind
by the United States when communist forces defeated the Saigon
government in April 1975 proved a bonanza for Vietnamese
officials, soldiers and enterprising black-marketeers.
    But now most of the piles of war-time scrap metal that lay
along national Route One from the north to the south of the
country even as late as last year have been sold and melted
down.
    And Vietnam, having lost aid and preferential trade from the
former Soviet Union, is now looking to the United States for a
more lasting economic break -- a lifting of the trade embargo
that Washington imposed on Hanoi in 1964.
    Prospects for normalization of ties between Washington and
Hanoi may have been damaged by the emotional firestorm President
Bush has encountered recently over the Americans listed as
missing from the Vietnam War.
    The uproar at an annual U.S. convention of Missing in Action
and Prisoner of War families in July underlined for Bush the
dangers of making overtures to Vietnam during a presidential
election year.
    Many Vietnamese officials, businessmen and students asked
this Reuter correspondent traveling recently through 15
provinces down the winding coast the same question -- when would
the U.S. embargo be lifted?
    The authorities in central Khanh Hoa province, which has
some of Vietnam's most beautiful beaches, say they are convinced
the embargo is keeping away would-be investors, not only from
the United States but other Western and Asian countries.
    Nguyen Van Anh said discussions with foreign partners about
building hotels in Khanh Hoa had never resulted in deals because
the province lacked infrastructure and the embargo was
discouraging investors.
    ``Countries that want to have joint ventures with us are
waiting for the embargo to be lifted,'' he said.
    Do Van Ngan, a cafe owner in the northern coastal resort
town of Do Son, said investors from Taiwan and Hong Kong had
come to discuss hotel construction projects, but seemed never to
finalize anything because of the embargo.
    Some Vietnam-born Americans, once hostile to Hanoi, now say
it is the time for Washington to lift the embargo.
    Le Ly Hayslip, a naturalized American businesswoman born
near Danang, said Vietnam desperately needed international help
to rebuild its shattered economy.
    ``I don't see any reason why the United States has to keep
the embargo against Vietnam. Seventeen years have passed (since
the war ended). Many wounds have been healed. Many friends have
been made,'' she said in an interview in Danang.
    Hayslip had flown to Danang to help the American film-maker
Oliver Stone make the film ``Heaven and Earth,'' adapted from
her autobiography, ``When Heaven and Earth Changed Places.''
    The book describes her war-torn youth in the village of Ke
Ly where she worked as a messenger for the Viet Cong, was
imprisoned and tortured by South Vietnamese soldiers.
    She was released, only to be raped and marked for execution
by Viet Cong guerrillas who thought she had betrayed them.
    Hayslip has built two health clinics, with help from
American Vietnam War veterans, and done other humanitarian work
here.
    One East European diplomat who asked not to be identified
said recently that Hanoi, despite decades of alliance with China
and the Soviet Union, had always considered the United States
the key to Vietnam's economic future.
    ``They've always seen the United States as being the one
that could really help,'' he said.
 REUTER
Newsgroups: soc.culture.vietnamese