CONFIDENTIAL
"We need as many forums as possible". Asked what might make Vietnam change its mind about troop withdrawal by the end of 1990, Man gave a rambling and evasive answer but which, significantly perhaps, referred to continuing outside help to Pol Pot and the Khmer Rouge. I said that Vietnam was not entirely free of responsibility for the Pol Pot genocide which was one of the side effects of the second Indo-China war. Hun Sen himself was a former Khmer Rouge. Man disagreed with me that the genocide had originated in a purge of the party. He also complained that 200,000 Khmer refugees had fled into Vietnam during the Pol Pot period. But all had returned after 1979.
Vietnamese domination of Indo-China?
16.
The Vietnamese insisted that the suggestion that Vietnam was bent on dominating Indo-China was groundless and always had been. I recalled centuries of Vietnamese, Siamese, Cambodian and Burmese rivalry. After World War II, General Giap publicly stated and acted on the basis that the Vietminh and PAVN's theatre of operations was all three Indo-China states. The Head of Europe II Department, MFA (Nguyen Dinh Phuong), said that it was the French who had created the Indo-China Union, lumping together three countries of different language, culture and race. That was why the Communist Party of Indo-China, founded in 1930, had subsequently split into three separate parties. He, and others, insisted that Vietnam accepted that Laos and Cambodia, as well as Vietnam, should be sovereign and independent. Talk of Vietnamese hegemony was propaganda used by others to justify interference in the internal affairs of these countries.
US/Vietnamese Relations
17.
The conversation with Nguyen Can, Deputy Head of the North America Department, was particularly lively. He went into the fraught history of Vietnam's relations with the United States in some detail. He said that the Vietnamese had always been ready to hand over the remains of US servicemen (MIAs), and supply relevant information in their possession, on a humanitarian basis that must apply to both sides. 241 sets of remains, and information about 49 other MIAS, had been handed over to date. But despite Vietnamese good will, the American response had not been helpful. They always tried to gain unilateral advantage. In 1985, the Vietnamese had offered a two year plan to resolve the MIA issue. The US had refused. In 1986 they had again discussed the issue with the Americans but the result was deadlock. Admiral Vessey had then come to Vietnam in August 1987 as the personal representative of the President.
His
CA2AIU
CONFIDENTIAL