The two communist states fought a border war in 1979 and still contend over control of the Spratly Islands in the South China Sea. Hanoi s agenda needed U.S. cooperation. The first priority for the U.S., according to a high ranking American trade official, has been a full accounting for American service personnel listed as Missing in Action in the aftermath of the Vietnam War. Additional U.S. interests delineated by the same official included regional stability and growth, open markets, human rights, and the rule of law. This agenda required Vietnamese cooperation.
Conditions favoring rapprochement are absent in other parts of the world.
Milosevic s Yugoslavia continues to obstruct U.S. peacekeeping and peace making operations in Bosnia and Kosovo, and Secretary of State Madeleine Albright actively pursues the Yugoslav leader s removal. Cuba routinely votes against the U.S. in the UN and maintains its hostile propaganda towards Washington. Mutual vindictiveness still burns brightly with Iran over American hostages, who continue to sue Iran. Other judgments in the hundred of millions have been awarded but not collected to Americans who had been held in Teheran and Beirut. Furthermore, the State Department still lists Iran as a state sponsor of international terrorism.