Newsgroups: soc.culture.vietnamese
Date:         Mon, 25 Jan 1993 10:25:11 -0500
              USENET." <VIETNET@USCVM.BITNET>
From:         Nhan Tran <tran@PEORA.SDC.CCUR.COM>
Subject:      NEWS/VN: VN hopes 1993 will bring end to US embargo

01/24

VIETNAM HOPES 1993 WILL BRING END TO U.S. EMBARGO

    By Kathleen Callo
    HANOI, Reuter - Vietnamese are blasting Hanoi and other parts of the
country with firecrackers this week, welcoming in the Tet Lunar New Year and
making a traditional wish for health, happiness and prosperity.
    Many are also hoping the Year of the Rooster will bring an end to an
embargo Washington imposed on Hanoi in 1964 and the normalization of relations
between the former enemies.
    They say they want American investment and technology, but many people in
the United States seem eager to forget Vietnam, a place they think of only as a
battlefield.
    Tet -- Vietnam's most festive holiday -- conjures up bewildering images for
Americans who recall the offensive launched 25 years ago by communist forces.
    It was at the end of the Lunar New Year, on Jan. 30, 1968, that Viet Cong
guerrillas and North Vietnamese soldiers attacked more than 100 towns and
cities in South Vietnam, catching the U.S. military and the allied Saigon
government by surprise.
    Americans at home were shocked by televised images of Viet Cong commandos
blasting their way into the U.S. embassy and attacking other strategic points
in Saigon.
    Vietnamese Prime Minister Vo Van Kiet sent a peace offering to Americans
this month in a letter to Time magazine.
    "Friendly relations and cooperation between the Vietnamese people and
American people are to the mutual benefit of both nations, for the sake of
peace, happiness and prosperity," said his letter.
    After Hanoi defeated the U.S.-backed Saigon government in 1975 and
reunified the North and South, Washington extended the embargo to all of
Vietnam. It has refused to open diplomatic ties.
    When Vietnamese troops withdrew from Cambodia in 1989, some in Hanoi
expected Washington to lift the sanctions. It didn't.
    Since 1991 Vietnam has been trying to fulfil U.S. demands to resolve the
fate of American soldiers missing from the war, help bring peace to Cambodia
and free former South Vietnamese officials from re-education camps.
    Washington has eased the embargo, but still blocks World Bank loans and
bans U.S. companies from doing business here.
    "I'm so depressed about it. Vietnam has done everything the Americans
asked," a Vietnamese government official said. "It's ridiculous. We have done
too much."
    Vietnamese express little bitterness towards Americans.
    But Vietnamese hopes have risen -- then been dashed -- so many times over a
lifting of the embargo that some Hanoi residents say that eventuality has lost
some allure.
    One civil servant, asked how people will react when the embargo is lifted,
said: "There will be no dancing in the streets. There will be no fireworks.
Vietnamese people would have danced in the streets two years ago, but now they
are so tired, so fed up."
    Western economists say so many non-communist countries in Asia and Europe
have been trading with Vietnam since the late 1980s that the embargo has
diminishing impact.
    General Tran Cong Man, deputy head of the Vietnam Journalists' Association,
said an end to the embargo was no longer a make-or-break issue for Vietnam's
economy.
    "In the past, we thought the embargo had a decisive impact on our economy.
But in the past two or three years, we've opened the door to other countries,
the West, the (southeast) Asian countries, Japan. Only the United States is not
here," he said.
    That's a sore point for many American companies.
    Washington has softened its stance towards Hanoi since 1991 by allowing
American non-governmental aid organizations to operate here and for American
businessmen to visit. In December American companies got U.S. approval to open
offices in Vietnam.
    Man said he didn't expect President Clinton to move quickly on Vietnam. But
the long term looked good.
    "We are always optimists. Sooner or later they'll lift the embargo," he
said.
Newsgroups: soc.culture.vietnamese