
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, July 3, 1993                   TAG: 9307030161
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-2   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Associated Press
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Medium

U.S. WILL ALLOW LOANS TO VIETNAM

The United States will stop opposing international loans to Vietnam, but normal relations with the Hanoi government will depend on further progress in accounting for Americans missing in action, President Clinton announced Friday.

Nevertheless, it was the most significant step toward normalization since the end of the bitter war with Vietnam.

Clinton had struggled with the decision for months, seeking to balance the anguish and concern of families of missing Americans with experts' recommendations that the United States must reward Vietnam for the help it has given so far on the accounting process.

The president opted for a two-pronged approach: allowing the International Monetary Fund to lend money to Vietnam, and at the same time sending a high-level delegation to Hanoi to press for more information about MIAs from the Vietnam War.

The United States, acting alone, has blocked offers by France and Japan to pay more than $140 million in arrears that Hanoi owes to the International Monetary Fund. If Washington drops its objections and Vietnam's debt is paid, the IMF could decide this month to make new loans to the impoverished government in Hanoi for the first time since 1975.

But the president warned that "any further steps in U.S.-Vietnamese relations will strictly depend on further progress by the Vietnamese on the POW-MIA issue." He said, "Progress to date is simply not sufficient to warrant any change in our trade embargo or any further steps toward normalization."

The U.S. embargo was imposed after the Communist north defeated South Vietnamese forces and reunited the country in 1975.

More than 2,200 Americans still are listed as missing in action in all of Southeast Asia from the Vietnam War - some 1,650 of them in Vietnam itself.

The White House said Vietnam had returned 28 sets of remains so far this year alone, compared with 32 sets recovered in all of 1992. It said joint U.S.-Vietnamese teams had this year investigated 200 MIA cases, and the United States had been provided access to 18,000 related documents and artifacts.

Clinton said he had invited representatives of the three largest veterans groups to accompany the official U.S. delegation to Vietnam, which will include Assistant Secretary of State Winston Lord, Deputy Secretary of Veterans Affairs Hershel Gober and Lt. Gen. Michael Ryan, a decorated Vietnam War veteran who works for the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

by CNB