The World - News from May 12, 1987

Washington is concerned over what appears to be a significant increase in trade between Japan and Vietnam because it fears an improved Vietnamese economy could undermine efforts to resolve the problem of 2,500 Americans listed as missing in action from the Vietnam War, a U.S. official said in an interview. “It is not in the interests of the United States to have a strong economy in Vietnam,” said the official, who declined to be identified. The United States, along with Japan and most major Western nations, halted all official economic ties with Vietnam after the Hanoi government sent troops to occupy neighboring Cambodia in 1978.