Fight looms over US curbs on aid to
Vietnam By Alan Boyd
SYDNEY -
Former US president Bill Clinton called it one of his
greatest diplomatic triumphs, in an administration with
an unremarkable foreign-policy record. But it was only a
matter of time before the 1994 normalization of
relations with Vietnam, a red rag for conservatives and
Vietnamese exiles alike, would be put to the blowtorch
in Washington.
The House of Representatives
voted 323-45 this week for a Vietnam Human Rights Act
that will curb all non-humanitarian aid from Washington
until Hanoi demonstrates a stronger commitment to
democracy and individual freedoms.
According to
the legislation, which was sponsored by Republican
Representative Chris Smith from New Jersey, the
Vietnamese government "pursues a policy of harassment,
discrimination, and intimidation ... against those who
peacefully express dissent from government or party
policy".
The legislation prevents
Washington from increasing non-humanitarian assistance to
Vietnam beyond the existing level of US$40 million unless
Hanoi sets political and religious prisoners free and
improves its overall human-rights record, in the judgment of the
US president.
Significantly, the bill exerts
indirect economic pressure by authorizing the US
president to block any non-humanitarian loans or
assistance from the International Monetary Fund or the
World Bank, both of which are heavily committed to
development assistance in Vietnam.
One exception
to the aid curbs from Washington is a cash fund of $4
million that the White House is permitted to distribute
in 2004-05 to Vietnamese dissidents and groups that
"promote internationally recognized human rights". A
further $10 million will be spent upgrading
transmissions from Radio Free Asia and preventing
Vietnam from jamming signals from the pro-democracy
network, which is directly funded by Washington.
Smith is vice chairman of the powerful House
Committee on International Relations and has spent three
years pushing the bill. Although it has passed in the
House, it still has to be passed by the Senate, and is
not assured of any easy ride.
As Smith himself
has admitted, the reason it took so long to reach this
stage is because it was opposed at every step by a group
of liberal senators led by John Kerry, whose 1990s
campaigns were instrumental in forcing Clinton's hand.
Kerry, a naval commander in Indochina in the 1960s
before he switched sides to the anti-war movement in the
latter stages of the conflict, has now emerged as the
likely Democratic presidential candidate.
Getting bills rescinded is a tall order.
But there is one let-out: the legislation empowers Kerry,
if he is elected in November, to offer a partial or
full waiver on the grounds that closer relations
are considered vital for US national-security interests.
Many US strategists are not convinced of
the merits of the bill, which runs counter to the
Pentagon's efforts to reestablish a naval presence in
southern Vietnam as part of a quick-reaction force
capable of responding to tensions in the Taiwan Strait
and the South China Sea.
A careful process of
confidence-building culminated in the visit of a US
warship to Ho Chi Minh City in November, the first
direct contact between the two armed forces for almost
three decades. Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld, one
of the leading hawks in the Bush administration, met his
Vietnamese counterpart Pham Van Tra at the Pentagon that
same week, in what was portrayed by Washington as a
symbolic burying of postwar strains.
More
than 58,000 US troops and 3 million Vietnamese were
killed in the 20-year conflict, but 60% of present-day
Vietnamese were born after the war ended, a point that
has been made many times by another war veteran,
Secretary of State Colin Powell.
The State
Department has become a reluctant participant in the
political debate because the bill rests heavily on
testimony by US diplomats of Vietnam's suppression of
political dissent and a heavy-handed - and clumsy -
approach to religious freedom, as well as the brutal
containment of ethnic tensions in highland regions.
In February, assistant secretary of state
Matthew Daley reported to the Senate Foreign Relations
Committee that Hanoi would need to do more to honor its
commitments to boost individual liberties if it wanted
better ties with Washington.
While Vietnam
was "a less repressive society now than 10 or five
years ago", Daley said, there were continuing curbs on
free speech, the press and assembly, and the
government's overall human-rights record was poor. Daley, however,
cautioned against an over-reaction by legislators,
noting that many of the positive trends now evident in
Vietnam were a result of the country's reintegration
into the international community.
"Continued
interaction by the US government and other American
institutions will continue to play a pivotal role in the
further expansion of these positive trends. Efforts to
reisolate Vietnam or to 'punish' it with new sanctions
will likely prove counterproductive to our long-term
goals and interests in Vietnam," he said.
Hanoi evidently views the bill as a threat. This month
it freed two elderly dissidents, Colonel Pham Que Duong
and Professor Tran Khue, in an apparent bid to convince
US legislators it was taking the accusations seriously.
The ruling Communist Party described the House
vote as "untimely and detrimental to bilateral
relations" in an editorial carried by the Nhan Dan
newspaper. But its response was surprisingly restrained,
possibly reflecting a concern that economic links might
be hurt.
US investments are modest
by regional standards: about 350 US firms are registered
in Vietnamese business ventures, but their combined
capital is only about $1.5 billion. Yet 70% of all
Vietnamese exports are likely to be shipped to US markets
this year, up from nothing in 1994, when Clinton lifted
a trade embargo that had existed since the end of the
Indochina conflict in 1975. Since a bilateral
trade agreement (BTA) took effect in December 2001, US
sales to Vietnam, including such big-budget items as aircraft and
farm equipment, have risen by more than 150%, with
two-way commerce reaching an estimated $6 billion in
2003.
Vietnam is obliged under the BTA to open
its markets more to US goods and undertake a wide range
of structural reforms. It is lagging behind, but Daley
argued nonetheless that "issues we address together show
that both of our countries are now concentrating on our
future together rather than simply looking to the past".
Economic relations were already suffering before
the latest curbs, partly because Vietnam has become too
successful as an exporter, but also due to its failure
to meet qualifying standards for membership in the World
Trade Organization (WTO).
Anti-dumping duties
and quotas have been imposed by Washington on a range of
Vietnamese exports that had threatened the market share
of US producers, including shrimps, textiles and
garments. The textile quotas would have been lifted in
January if Vietnam had been accepted into the WTO.
Having missed out, it will effectively be sidelined from
a trade that netted Vietnamese firms $2.5 billion in
2003.
A bruising battle now looms over the bill
in the Senate, with Smith vowing to put the advancement
of democracy and American ideals firmly on the
conservative agenda as the United States gears up for
the presidential election in November.
In
the meantime, Hanoi has already had its say on the US
approach to individual liberties: "Their war of
aggression in Vietnam was the height of their violations
of human rights and national self-determination," the
Nhan Dan editorial commented.
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