Vietnam diplomatic revolution since war<\/p>\n
By John Rogers<\/p>\n
HANOI (Reuter): Vietnam is entering the international
\nmainstream.<\/p>\n
\"It's taken a long time, but Vietnam is taking its place on
\nthe world stage at long last,\" a Western ambassador says. \"It's
\nbecome a normal country, with great potential.\"<\/p>\n
Vietnam, viewed as pariah by much of the West and non-
\ncommunist Asia for its 10-year occupation of neighboring
\nCambodia, is now courted as a partner owing to its economic and
\nbusiness potential.<\/p>\n
Although it is one of the world's poorest countries, Vietnam
\nis the second largest in population in Southeast Asia after
\nIndonesia, with 72 million people, and is rich in oil, minerals,
\ncoffee and rice.<\/p>\n
After five decades of war or diplomatic isolation, Hanoi has
\nwatered down its old communist friendships and established
\nvigorous new ties with Asian neighbors and the West.<\/p>\n
In July, Vietnam will become the seventh member of the
\nAssociation of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN), formed in the
\nlate 1960s as a buffer against a perceived communist threat from
\nChina, and Vietnam.<\/p>\n
ASEAN members Thailand and the Philippines played an active
\nrole in support of U.S.-backed South Vietnam during the war. Now
\nthey jostle for business opportunities in Vietnam with other
\nformer enemies of Hanoi like South Korea, Australia and New
\nZealand, which sent troops to support the Saigon regime.
\nVietnam is also on better terms with its former arch-enemy, the
\nUnited States.<\/p>\n
In February, 1994, Washington ended an economic embargo on
\nHanoi imposed in 1964 after it entered the war.<\/p>\n
They established formal links and opened diplomatic missions
\nthis year and full relations look likely in the next year or two.
\nVietnam says it's time to bury the past and for the United States
\nto realize that \"Vietnam is a country, not a war\".<\/p>\n
U.S. President Bill Clinton says he wants more progress
\ntowards a \"full accounting\" for more than 2,000 U.S. airmen and
\nsoldiers still listed as missing in action (MIA), presumed dead,
\nin Indochina.<\/p>\n
Vietnam could not have achieved its new-found international
\nrespectability without U.S. approval. Washington took steps to
\nbring Vietnam into the world financial community by lifting its
\nde facto ban on International Monetary Fund (IMF) and World Bank
\nassistance in July 1993.<\/p>\n
It allowed other governments, led by France and Japan, to
\nrepay Hanoi's IMF arrears, clearing the way for new loans.
\nThe IMF, World Bank and the Asian Development Bank (ADB) have
\nsince approved over $1 billion in aid for roads, ports and other
\nprojects vital to Vietnam's drive for growth.<\/p>\n
\"The U.S. go-ahead amounted to a seal of international
\napproval,\" said a European banker in Vietnam. \"Vietnam became
\nrespectable, which it had not been for decades.\"
\nRich nations have pledged $3.8 billion in aid to Hanoi the past
\ntwo years. Business executives from the West and Asia's \"tiger\"
\neconomies are falling over each other to explore investment,
\nmanufacturing and sales prospects in Vietnam.<\/p>\n
It's a far cry from Vietnam's position in the late 1980s.
\nAlthough the Communist Party had approved a shift to market
\neconomics in 1986, ahead of its Soviet bloc allies, Vietnam still
\ndepended on them for aid and trade.<\/p>\n
Hanoi faced a crisis when the Soviet and East European
\ncommunist regimes collapsed in 1989-91 and had no choice but to
\nseek new partners in the West and capitalist Asia, partners
\nexperienced in the economic system with which it was flirting.<\/p>\n
In the earlier Cold War atmosphere, North Vietnam had been
\nviewed by the West as a hardline anti-capitalist regime and was
\nfeared by smaller Southeast Asian countries.<\/p>\n
Vietnamese communist forces had booted out the French colonial
\nregime with a shock victory in the 1954 battle of Dien Bien Phu.<\/p>\n
They went on to stun the world again in the \"American War\",
\nwhich started in the early 1960s after the country had become
\ndivided between north and south.<\/p>\n
North Vietnamese and southern communist guerrilla armies
\ndefeated the U.S.-backed Saigon regime on April 30, 1975, two
\nyears after U.S. combat troops withdrew under a peace pact agreed
\nin Paris. At least two million Vietnamese and 58,000 Americans
\nwere killed in the fighting.<\/p>\n
Despite post-war exhaustion, the Vietnamese army invaded
\nCambodia in December, 1978, following a series of Cambodian
\nattacks on border villages and occupied Cambodia for a decade.<\/p>\n
The occupation of Cambodia earned Vietnam the international
\ncold shoulder and not the praise it felt it deserved for ending
\nthe hated Khmer Rouge regime that had ruled in Phnom Penh since
\n1975.<\/p>\n
Communist, neutral and left-leaning European countries like
\nSweden and Finland gave Vietnam economic aid in the 1980s, but
\ndeveloped countries and ASEAN joined a U.S.-led boycott of Hanoi.<\/p>\n
It was only after Vietnam's army left Cambodia in 1989 that
\nWestern aid resumed in earnest, with governments eying business
\nopportunities in an economy on the way to liberalization.<\/p>",
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