Newsgroups: soc.culture.vietnamese
Date:         Thu, 7 Jan 1993 17:14:02 -0500
              USENET." <VIETNET@USCVM.BITNET>
From:         Nhan Tran <tran@PEORA.SDC.CCUR.COM>
Subject:      NEWS/VN: Bush dangles rewards for VN as clock ticks

01/06

Bush dangles rewards for Vietnam as clock ticks

    By Jim Wolf
    WASHINGTON, Jan 6, Reuter - The Bush administration is holding out the
prospect of lifting the trade embargo against Vietnam before leaving office,
but time is running out for Hanoi to meet the conditions.
    Senior administration officials said in interviews last week that President
Bush was ready to act if Vietnam rapidly returned remains of U.S. servicemen
believed by some policymakers to have been recovered or readily recoverable.
    The officials also tied U.S. policy on the issue to progress in resolving
the remainder of about 135 top-priority cases of GI's who were last known alive
in captivity, but whose remains were never returned nor accounted for.
    "They need to do something soon" if Bush is to follow through on a decision
last month that eased curbs on U.S. companies wishing to do business in
Vietnam, one official monitoring the normalization process said.
    "I can't see why they'd miss the opportunity," he added, referring to the
runup to Jan. 20, when Bush hands power to President-elect Clinton.
    Clinton, preoccupied with domestic economic problems, is not expected to
make normalization with Hanoi an early high priority.
    During the presidential campaign, he repeatedly said he would be in no rush
to extend an olive branch while questions remained about the fate of the 2,264
Americans currently listed as missing from the U.S. war in Indochina.
    In the most significant easing of the sanctions since the war, Bush freed
U.S. companies on December 14 to set up offices in Vietnam and sign contracts,
contingent on an eventual lifting of the trade ban.
    The White House acknowledged at the time stepped-up Vietnamese efforts to
get to the bottom of the prisoner of war/missing in action issue. But it said
Hanoi must do more for the Bush administration to act again under a "road map"
for normalization announced at the time of the Paris peace accord on Cambodia
in 1991.
    A second administration official interviewed last week discounted the
notion that U.S. efforts to keep pressure on Hanoi were about to be overtaken
by events. Allies such as France and Japan favor lifting the U.S.-coordinated
ban on lending to Hanoi by World Bank and International Monetary Fund.
    Ann Mills Griffiths, executive director of National League of Families of
American Prisoners and Missing in Southeast Asia, said she was not entirely
sure why Hanoi would hold back remains when it could be on the verge of having
the embargo dropped.
    But Virginia Foote, director of the private U.S.-Vietnam trade council in
Washington, said she had reluctantly concluded that "there's nothing more going
to come out of the Bush administration" for Vietnam.
    She said U.S. policymakers were setting a standard of performance that
simply could not be fulfilled by Hanoi because it did not have any such
warehoused remains.
Newsgroups: soc.culture.vietnamese