Vietnam Lets Foreign Co Provide Global Telecoms Links

The Far Eastern Economic Review
April 2, 2003

By Margot Cohen in Hanoi

THE VIETNAMESE GOVERNMENT has long refused to let foreign intruders bypass state control of international telecoms gateways. So it was quite a surprise in late March when Deputy Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung approved a trial run for a satellite-linked Internet service provided by Loral Skynet, a unit of New York-based, publicly listed Loral Space & Communications. The move could signal new opportunities for local and overseas telecoms and software companies.

Excerpts from report for Congress on labor rights in Vietnam

Congressional Research Service ˜ The Library of Congress"
Report for Congress
Received through the CRS Web
Order Code RL31470
June 21, 2002
Nicole J. Sayres
Analyst in Asian Affairs
Foreign Affairs, Defense, and Trade Division
The Vietnam-U.S. Textile Agreement Debate:
Trade Patterns, Interests, and Labor Rights

“Possible Approaches Concerning a Vietnam Labor Provision
No Labor Provision. Many argue that there is no need for a labor provision

An America veteran's view on human rights

STATEMENT OF JAMES L. RHODES
Box 488 Camp Hill, Alabama 36850-0488
Life Member: Veterans of Foreign Wars; American Legion; Disabled American Veterans. National Chairman: Vietnam Combat Veterans, Ltd.
2002 National Point of Light award winner due to volunteer services to American veterans and organizations in Vietnam. 2002 WASHINGTON TIMES FOUNDATION honoree for editorials written regarding American & Vietnamese veterans issues.

Senators oppose quotas on VN imports



HA NOI (April 11, 2003) — Twenty three US senators have petitioned their Trade Representative Robert Zoellick not to impose quotas on Vietnamese garment and textile imports through a bilateral textile restraint agreement, a Viet Nam Ministry of Trade source said yesterday.

They said in a letter to him that garment imports from Viet Nam do not threaten the American market or jobs in the US garment industry. Nor do imports from Viet Nam affect supplies from Western markets where the US has vested rights in preferential trade programmes, they pointed out.

An American columnist's view on Vietnam's human rights situation

By BRAD O'LEARY, USA Today columnist

One thing we must make clear is that the US State Department's report is an annual report on many countries in the world.

In the House of Representatives, Congressman Chris Smith made it sound as if it was focused on Vietnam, but it was not.

In my opinion, there is a repression of political thought. If someone in Congress read all the negative things and said "let's do something," there also has to be someone who says: "Wait a minute! What about all the good things that you are ignoring?"

Dispatch From Vietnam

The Nation, April 14, 2003 issue
by Peter Davis


Hanoi - In this country, where a US military attack echoes more loudly perhaps than anywhere else in the world, protesters against the war are expressing themselves from Hanoi in the north to central Vietnam to Ho Chi Minh City to the Mekong Delta in the south. At Nha Trang, a resonant place-name in our old war, 7,000 people demonstrated against our new one. The chief sentiment is not support for Saddam Hussein but, in light of the Vietnamese experience with the American military, sympathy for the Iraqi people.

HUMAN RIGHTS ISSUES IN VIETNAM-US RELATIONS

On April 3, 2003, Congressman Christopher H. Smith (R. NJ) and several co-sponsors held a press conference introducing the so-called “The Human Rights Act of Vietnam – 2003”. This move runs counter to the advancing relationship and cooperation between Vietnam and the United States, and creates a false understanding of human rights in Vietnam.

Following are comments of the Press Bureau of the Embassy of the Socialist Republic of Vietnam on the issue:

VASEP's new initiatives to solve fish dispute

Ha Noi, Apr. 3 (VNA)-The Viet Nam Association of Seafood exporters and processors (VASEP) has put forth inititives to help resolve the Viet Nam-U.S dispute over tra and basa catfish.

VASEP said that the initiatives which could help create a win-win situation include the following:

-Apply quota for tra and basa fillets from 2003-2005: the 2003 quota equals to 90 percent, the 2004 quota equals to 95 percent and abd the 2005 quota equals to 100 percent of 2002. As from 2005, quota will not be applied. Quota will be distributed publicly in transparency.

VN awards friendship medal to US documentary director

Viet Nam New, March 24, 2003

HA NOI — American filmmaker Peter Davis, director of the Oscar-winning documentary Hearts and Minds, has been awarded the "Peace and Friendship among Nations" medal for his contribution to Viet Nam’s struggle for national independence.

The medal was presented last Thursday, marking the occasion of Peter’s return to Viet Nam after 30 years by Vu Xuan Hong, President of the Viet Nam Union of Friendship Organisation.

Northern village keeps its educational tradition alive

Viet Nam News, March 24, 2003
by Anh Vu

Vietnamese culture is noted for its encouragement of learning for learning’s sake and nowhere more so than Tam Son Village in the country’s north.

Its other claim to fame is being the native village of Ngo Gia Tu, one of the founders of the Communist Party of Indochina.

Rough start

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