Path: bloom-picayune.mit.edu!snorkelwacker.mit.edu!americast.com!americast.com!americast-post Newsgroups: americast.twt.news From: americast-post@AmeriCast.Com Organization: American Cybercasting Approved: americast-post@AmeriCast.com Subject: Vietnam embargo may be relaxed Date: Tue, 17 Nov 92 15:07:56 EST Message-ID: \SE A;WORLD \SS (WS) \HD Vietnam embargo may be relaxed \BY Kathleen Callo \CR REUTERS NEWS AGENCY \DT HANOI HANOI - Sen. John Kerry indicated yesterday that President Bush might soon ease Washington's long-standing embargo against Vietnam in response to help from Hanoi in accounting for U.S. servicemen missing from the Vietnam War. The Massachusetts Democrat, who heads a Senate committee on MIAs, told reporters on his arrival in Hanoi that Vietnam had greatly increased cooperation in the past year and appeared ready to do more. "It's my sense that the president may be in a position, if we get adequate cooperation and if we can speed this process up, to make a positive move with respect to the embargo," Mr. Kerry said. He said he felt the United States, by "moving on the embargo," would be able to speed up joint efforts with the Vietnamese to answer questions about missing Americans. Mr. Kerry told Vietnamese Deputy Foreign Minister Le Mai he had a letter from Mr. Bush for President Le Duc Anh. He said it was the first time an American president had sent a direct message to a Vietnamese president since the war ended in 1975. Mr. Kerry gave no details of the letter but said he would meet with Mr. Anh, Foreign Minister Nguyen Manh Cam and several other senior officials during the three-day visit. He said Hanoi already had told him it was ready to hand over certain classified Vietnamese documents that the Senate committee had requested in its search for answers about what happened to some servicemen. There has been speculation in Washington recently that Mr. Bush, whose administration began moving in 1991 toward normalizing ties with Hanoi and a lifting of the embargo, might ease or even lift those sanctions before his term ends Jan. 20. Rumors spread over the years by some Americans that missing servicemen are still being held prisoner in Indochina have helped block normalization and lifting of the embargo. Mr. Kerry said his committee, created a year ago, had found no conclusive evidence to substantiate those rumors. "If the cooperation is forthcoming, I am confident the president will want to reciprocate in some way. I can't tell you what that is. But we are definitely on a road here, as the president has said many times, leading toward normalization," he said. Washington has made Vietnamese cooperation in accounting for MIAs one condition for normalization and an end to the embargo, which was imposed on Hanoi in 1964 and extended to a reunified Vietnam when the communists won the war. U.S. experts who have spent the last four years doing painstaking investigations here say they have found evidence to prove or indicate that servicemen listed by Washington as "presumed dead but unaccounted for" died in the war. Washington lists 2,265 Americans as unaccounted for in Indochina. This article is copyright 1992 The Washington Times. Redistribution to other sites is not permitted except by arrangement with American Cybercasting Corporation. For more information, send-email to usa@AmeriCast.COM