THE VIRGINIAN-PILOT
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: Sunday, January 29, 1995 TAG: 9501290067
SECTION: FRONT PAGE: A14 EDITION: FINAL
SOURCE: THE NEW YORK TIMES
DATELINE: HANOI, VIETNAM LENGTH: Short : 38 lines
With toasts of sweet Russian champagne, U.S. and Vietnamese diplomats marked the signing Saturday of an agreement that will allow the United States to raise the flag over the first U.S. diplomatic mission in Vietnam in nearly 20 years.
The agreement signed in Hanoi, the Vietnamese capital, gave the United States custody of a modern nine-story office building here for the base of operations for U.S. diplomats until the countries agree on the establishment of full diplomatic relations and the opening of embassies.
U.S. diplomats, who have been stationed in Hanoi for more than a year, said they would begin to move into the building this weekend. They expect to open Friday, the day after the Vietnamese end their celebration of Tet, the lunar new year and Vietnam's most important holiday.
Their Vietnamese counterparts are expected to take over within days the former South Vietnamese embassy in Washington, abandoned after the fall of the Saigon government in 1975, and to use it as their liaison office.
Until Saturday, U.S. diplomats in Hanoi had worked out of a compound maintained by the Defense Department for its investigators who are assigned here to determine the fate of more than 1,600 U.S. servicemen still listed as missing in action from the Vietnam War.
It is the issue of the missing Americans that is still holding up full diplomatic relations between Hanoi and Washington, with the United States insisting that it will not open an embassy here and send an ambassador until there is further progress in the investigations. by CNB