From: "tuan tu" <tuan.tu@canrem.com>
Newsgroups: soc.culture.vietnamese
Subject: [news] us lifts ban
Date: 14 Apr 92 23:26:15 EST
Reply-To: "tuan tu" <tuan.tu@canrem.com>
Distribution: soc
Organization: Canada Remote Systems


    REUTER
Reut18:12 04-13

BC-VIETNAM-USA
REUTER-ID:703203045
BC-VIETNAM-USA
 U.S. LIFTS BAN ON TELECOM LINKS WITH VIETNAM
(Also moved to national desks)
    WASHINGTON, Reuter - The United States, in another sign of
improving relations with a former enemy, said Monday it will
modify its economic embargo against Vietnam to allow the
establishment of telecommunications links.
    ``Our decision to lift the telecommunications ban is in
response to positive steps by Vietnam on POW/MIA issues as well
as Vietnam's continued support of the Cambodia peace
settlement,'' State Department spokeswoman Margaret Tutwiler
said in a written statement.
    ``Our step demonstrates U.S. intent to fulfill our
commitments as Vietnam fulfills its commitments. It is in
keeping with the established U.S. policy of a step-by-step
process of normalization of relations with Vietnam,'' she said.
    She noted the change in policy will facilitate humanitarian
contact between the American/Vietnamese community and their
family members still in Vietnam.
    In the last year, scores of U.S. experts, working with
Vietnamese officials, have dug up graves in Vietnam and
interviewed villagers about servicemen missing from the war.
    The announcement is the latest sign that U.S. ties with
Vietnam are warming. The Bush administration began normalizing
relations with Hanoi last October after the signing of a peace
settlement for Cambodia, which Vietnam occupied for 20 years
beginning in 1970.
    Economic competition is also believed to have been a factor
in Monday's U.S. action. Many businesses from Japan, among other
countries, have been moving eagerly into Vietnam.
    Tutwiler said payments to Vietnam will go into blocked
accounts pending full lifting of the embargo, which was imposed
after the United States withdrew from the country in 1973 during
its unsuccessful war to sustain a non-communist South Vietnam.
    Tutwiler said the United States expected the Vietnamese to
respond to the U.S. gesture with ``continued and intensified
efforts to achieve the fullest possible accounting of all our
missing Americans'' from the Indochina War.
    ``Over the coming weeks and months, we will consider
additional confidence-building steps as Vietnam fully implements
the agreements reached'' between Vietnemese Foreign Minister
Nguyen Manh Cam and U.S. Assistant Secretary of State Richard
Solomon when they met in Hanoi on March 5, she said.
    American Telephone and Telegraph Co. said in a statement it
was delighted with the State Department decision and pledged to
move quickly to provide telephone service to the 700,000
Vietnamese-Americans living in the United States.
    ``AT&T has actively pressed for this kind of arrangement
since 1988, believing that people's ability to communicate with
relatives and friends around the world should not be tied to
U.S. economic sanctions,'' the company said.
    ``We hope this trend continues and that a similar
arrangement is permitted with North Korea, the only remaining
country to which the United States prohibits telecommunications
services,'' it said.
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