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were simply stringing us along and had no real intention of taking their people back in significant numbers.
UK/Vietnamese Relations
10.
With all my interlocutors I stressed the importance of settling the Hong Kong boat people problem, and of total Vietnamese withdrawal from Cambodia, in the context of our bilateral relations. We would judge progress by Vietnamese deeds, not words. Deputy Foreign Minister Nguyen Dy Nien commented wryly that evidently the UK had a policy of "the two obstacles" à la Deng. I also made a point of thanking the Head of Europe II Department, MFA, for the offer of compensation for former British Embassy property in Ho Chi Minh City. We hoped that this could be converted into long leases on suitable properties in Hanoi. All the Vietnamese hoped the UK would be more active and visible in Vietnam and in the region generally. The Vice Minister for Foreign Economic Relations regretted that trade relations with the UK had not developed very far. British investment, such as by BP, was needed.
Vietnamese Economic Prospects
11.
Vietnamese officials conceded that their own mistaken economic policies had contributed to the poor statë of the economy.
But all insisted that there were numerous other "objective" reasons (eg long war, international ostracism) for their current problems. Some Vietnamese officials, and the Soviet Chargé d'Affaires (Anatolyi Voronine), specifically stated that it had been a mistake to squander scarce resources on prestige projects such as the Hoa Binh hydroelectric project and the Thang Long bridge. Voronine added that Gorbachev himself had had to talk the Vietnamese out of building their own steel works, as well as urging on them a "mental revolution" in their approach to economic matters. Mindful of my recent Hungarian experience, I asked about the practical value of COMECON membership to an economy like Vietnam's. Both Voronine and the Vice Minister for External Economic Relations, Dinh Phu Dinh, mentioned the 44th meeting of the COMECON Council in Prague which had agreed a complex programme of development to the year 2005, with a special programme bracketing Vietnam with Mongolia and Cuba (Dinh himself represented Vietnam in Prague). It was easy to cast doubt on the "objective" prospect of such cooperation doing much to close the gap between Vietnam and the four dragons, let alone Thailand or Malaysia (no multilateral payments system etc). Voronine made a half-hearted effort to defend Soviet/Vietnamese economic cooperation which seemed to boil down to Vietnam supplying tropical fruit, rubber, and such
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