China to Normalize Relations With Vietnam : Asia: Chinese leader Li Peng attributes the decision to progress in peace talks to settle the fighting between factions in Cambodia.

Sino-Vietnamese relations, strained for more than a decade, will soon be normalized, China announced Sunday.

Progress toward a political settlement of the factional fighting in Cambodia is the key factor allowing normalization of ties, Premier Li Peng said in remarks quoted Sunday by the New China News Agency.

“We had said before that Sino-Vietnamese relations would gradually return to normal along with a comprehensive, just and reasonable political settlement of the Cambodian issue,” Li said. “We are pleased to see that the process to settle the Cambodian issue is being sped up, and it goes without saying this is conducive to the normalization of the Sino-Vietnamese relations.”

The official news agency paraphrased Li as declaring that “Sino-Vietnamese relations will be normalized in the near future.”

Li’s comments indicated China believes that Cambodian peace talks between the Vietnamese-installed Phnom Penh government and a coalition of Chinese-backed guerrilla forces have reached the point where the conflict no longer blocks restoration of Sino-Vietnamese ties.

Beijing and Hanoi fought a brief border war in early 1979, when China invaded Vietnam to punish it for its late-1978 invasion of Cambodia. Tensions between the two nations were exacerbated throughout the 1980s by Hanoi’s political closeness to the Soviet Union, which prompted fear by China of Soviet influence on its southern border.

The normalization of Sino-Soviet ties in 1989 set the stage for reduced Sino-Vietnamese tensions and the beginning of a peace process in Cambodia. Over the past two years, with the collapse of communism in Eastern Europe and the Soviet Union, Beijing and Hanoi have buried their differences while seeking to buttress their shared but beleaguered hard-line ideologies.

Li sought to reassure other Southeast Asian countries that improved Sino-Vietnamese relations do not threaten their interests.

“Future Sino-Vietnamese relations will be state-to-state relations based on the five principles of peaceful coexistence and will not affect the existing friendly cooperation between China and Southeast Asian countries,” Li said.

He also gave a vague indication of support for expanded economic cooperation among nations of the region. “We have often heard about proposals for setting up organizations of economic cooperation at various levels between countries,” Li said.

The news agency paraphrased Li as adding: “China holds that so long as the suggestions are conducive to peace and development in the Asia-Pacific region, to economic contacts among the countries in this region and to the improvement of the living standard of the people of various countries, and beneficial to the friendly cooperation between China and Southeast Asian countries, China will adopt a positive attitude toward them.”