From: "tuan tu" <tuan.tu@canrem.com>
Newsgroups: soc.culture.vietnamese
Subject: [news] vn, at&t sign
Date: 16 Apr 92 12:35:17 EST
Reply-To: "tuan tu" <tuan.tu@canrem.com>
Distribution: soc
Organization: Canada Remote Systems


    REUTER
Reut10:55 04-16

REUTER-ID:703436041
BC-VIETNAM (SCHEDULED)
 VIETNAM, AT&T SIGN AGREEMENT ON TELECOM LINK
    By Kathleen Callo
    HANOI, Vietnam, Reuter - American Telephone & Telegraph Co.
signed an agreement with Vietnam Thursday on reopening
telecommunication links that have been severed since the end of
the Vietnam War.
    The memorandum, signed by Vietnam's state telecommunications
company, paves the way for the first link since the U.S.-backed
South Vietnamese government fell to communist forces from the
north in 1975.
    ``I believe that it is a major step forward for the two
countries ... for the role that telecommunications will play in
further improving relationships between our two countries and
enabling citizens to speak to one another again,'' said James
Hansen, AT&T's managing director for Southeast Asia.
    Washington cut relations with Hanoi and imposed economic
sanctions in 1964. It extended the measures to a reunified
Vietnam in 1975.
    But in October, the United States said it was ready to move
toward lifting the embargo and resuming diplomatic ties with
Hanoi. It said Monday it would modify the embargo to allow AT&T
to re-establish telecommunications links.
    Washington removed the ban in response to what it called
positive efforts by Vietnam in accounting for American
servicemen missing from the war and in bringing peace and free
elections to neighboring Cambodia.
    In a related development, Delta Air Lines, one of several
U.S. carriers eager to gain a foothold in Vietnam, said Tuesday
it invited the head of Vietnam Airlines and the Minister of
Trade and Tourism to visit the United States.
    Other U.S. carriers have tried to ease their way into
Vietnam with charter flights, flying Vietnamese emigrants and
refugees to the United States. Washington gave the airlines
special permission to deal with Vietnam because of the
humanitarian nature of the flights.
    Dang Van Than, director general of Vietnam's Directorate
General of Posts and Telecommunications, said the company would
do its best to set up the telecommunications links.
    Asked when they would be opened, AT&T's Hansen said, ``We
don't anticipate that it would be long. In fact we would see
initial service on a very limited basis in a matter of days,
just assuming appropriate approval in Washington. Then as far as
a full service with higher capacity, that would be a matter of
weeks.''
    Washington said the payments to Vietnam for the
telecommunications service would go into blocked accounts
pending a full lifting of the U.S. embargo.
    The Directorate General said that initially the two
companies would provide 210 telephone circuits, including 60
from Hanoi to France via satellite and through an undersea cable
network to the United States.
    The other 150 circuits will connect the United States by
satellite with Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnam's commercial hub, which
was known as Saigon until the fall of the South Vietnamese
government.
    Most relatives of the 700,000 Vietnamese-Americans live
there. About 2 million Vietnamese live overseas.
    Even though the United States has forbidden the practice, in
recent years people in Vietnam have been able to call the United
States by transferring calls through Sydney, Australia, or
Tokyo. It is still virtually impossible to call Vietnam from the
United States.
    In another move toward opening the Vietnamese economy,
lawmakers Thursday amended the communist country's constitution
to give citizens new freedom to make money, own means of
production, transfer land use and avoid arbitrary detention.
    The national assembly's 437 deputies unanimously adopted the
new constitution, the official Vietnam News newspaper said.
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