U.S. Lists Demands for Ties With Hanoi : Links Relations to Cambodia Troop Pullout but Says It Is Lagging

The Reagan Administration said Tuesday that it is prepared to extend diplomatic recognition to Vietnam once it pulls all of its occupation troops out of Cambodia and achieves an acceptable political settlement with that nation, but U.S. officials said Hanoi seems to be lagging far behind in its announced plan of withdrawing almost half of its troops by the end of this year.

The Administration’s explicit offer to open diplomatic relations in response to a troop withdrawal is not a radical change from earlier U.S. positions, but the tone of its announcement was far warmer to the Vietnamese regime than previous statements.

In effect, the formula sets up the same sort of automatic response that resulted last week in the U.S. dialogue with the Palestine Liberation Organization, the first since 1975. When the Reagan Administration agreed to substantive talks with the PLO, it was able to defuse much of the criticism by explaining that the action was an automatic result of PLO compliance with conditions established by an earlier Administration.

Although the Reagan Administration will be out of office before Vietnam could conceivably meet the troop withdrawal conditions, such policies carry over from one Administration to the next unless the succeeding Administration decides to change them.

State Department spokeswoman Phyllis Oakley said the Administration welcomes Vietnam’s latest troop withdrawal, which began this week. Hanoi has said that 18,000 soldiers from six army divisions will return to Vietnam during the next few days, the most significant movement since it announced in May that it would pull back 50,000 troops this year.

“While a significant number of troops are apparently being withdrawn this month, we remain skeptical that the 50,000 pledge will be met,” Oakley said. “At this point, we still estimate that some 90 (thousand) to 100,000 Vietnamese troops are in Cambodia.

“We continue to urge Hanoi to issue a precise timetable for the withdrawal of all Vietnamese troops in the context of an acceptable settlement for Cambodia, at which time we would be prepared to normalize our relations with Vietnam,” Oakley said.

U.S. officials estimated that Vietnam’s occupation force totaled 120,000 before the withdrawals began. They said between 10,000 and 15,000 soldiers were removed before the latest phase. Therefore, even if the full 18,000 are withdrawn this month, the total for the year would be no more than 32,000, and probably substantially fewer.

Oakley emphasized that a satisfactory settlement would guarantee that the brutal Khmer Rouge faction would not wield the power that it held before the Vietnamese invasion. That formulation, kept intentionally vague, would seem to permit Khmer Rouge participation in a coalition government while denying the faction a return to absolute power.

In recent weeks, Hanoi has sought to improve its relations with Washington by returning the remains of U.S. service personnel killed during the Vietnam War and by permitting the emigration of Amerasian offspring of U.S. soldiers.

Meanwhile, a bipartisan group of 40 authorities on Indochina led by former Sen. Dick Clark (D-Iowa) urged President-elect George Bush to offer a “measured diplomatic response” to the Vietnamese withdrawal from Cambodia.

The report, issued by the Aspen Institute, endorsed the Reagan Administration’s offer of full diplomatic relations in exchange for full withdrawal.