Global Isolation of Hanoi Weakens as Thais, Japanese Visit

A flurry of high-level visits to Vietnam in the last week has provided fresh evidence that Hanoi is finally emerging from its long international isolation.

On Wednesday, Anand Panyarachun, Thailand’s prime minister, began a three-day official visit to Vietnam, the first by a Thai head of government since 1979.

While the visit was primarily symbolic--Thailand was the staunchest foe of Communist expansion in Southeast Asia for three decades--it paid quick dividends to Bangkok. The Vietnamese government announced that it is allowing two Thai banks to open branches in Ho Chi Minh City, the first foreign firms allowed to operate as commercial banks in Vietnam.

Just last week, Gen. Suchinda Kraprayoon, the Thai armed forces commander, completed his own visit to Vietnam, with an agreement to buy U.S. aircraft parts captured by the Vietnamese from the fleeing Americans in the 1970s.

Of even greater importance to Vietnam, a Japanese delegation began a round of negotiations Tuesday aimed at working out the details for a resumption of Japanese government assistance to Vietnam, which was suspended in 1979.

The delegation, headed by Takao Kawakami, director of the Japanese Foreign Ministry’s economic cooperation bureau, was here to negotiate Vietnam’s repayment of a $157-million debt owed to Tokyo by the former South Vietnamese regime in Saigon.

Hanoi must agree to repay the debt before Tokyo will provide assistance, expected to be a far greater amount.

The Thai and Japanese visits mark the crumbling of an American effort to maintain a wide-ranging economic blockade against the Hanoi regime in the aftermath of the humiliating U.S. defeat in Indochina.

After Vietnam’s invasion of Cambodia in late 1978, which resulted in the ouster of the Khmer Rouge, Southeast Asian nations readily accepted American proposals for a boycott of Vietnam because they feared Vietnamese expansion, especially into Thailand. Virtually the entire Western world joined the boycott, and Vietnam moved firmly into the camp of the Soviet Union.

But the solidarity began crumbling in the late 1980s, especially after Vietnam formally announced its withdrawal from Cambodia in September, 1989. In October last year, the four parties in the Cambodian conflict signed a peace agreement in Paris, which has led many nations to drop the fig leaf of economic solidarity with the United States.

Last week, Italian Foreign Minister Gianni De Michelis announced $70 million in aid, which included the first Western loans to Vietnam in 20 years. Loans had been blocked by the United States at the International Monetary Fund.

A British minister, Lord Caithess, praised Vietnam’s economic reforms during a visit Sunday and promised to lobby the United States to drop the IMF embargo, according to press reports.

Since the signing of October’s Cambodian peace accords, the Bush Administration has announced a small relaxation of the embargo, allowing tour groups to visit Vietnam from the United States. But President Bush made it clear 10 days ago in Singapore that Washington has a wider agenda and will move slowly.

“The United States has an overriding, compelling desire to have total assurance that we know the fate of every American involved in the conflict with Vietnam,” Bush said, adding that it was “a little premature” to discuss the end of the embargo. But to other Western countries, Vietnam has met the conditions laid down for an improvement in relations by persuading the Phnom Penh regime to sign the peace accord.

Even Singapore, a staunchly conservative Southeast Asian state that has no formal relations with Hanoi, announced Monday that Singapore Airlines will resume flights to Hanoi and Ho Chi Minh City for the first time since the 1970s.