4
interests of all parties would be best served when commerce
could be conducted in the context of normal diplomatic relations.
At the conclusion of the December 1977 meeting, both
sides agreed that additional discussions would be useful and
that they would be scheduled at a mutually convenient time
and place. As you may recall, in January 1978 a grand jury
named Vietnamese Ambassador to the United Nations Dinh Ba Thi
as an unindicted co-conspirator in an espionage case involving
a U.S. Government official and a Vietnamese resident of this, ·
country. Following our request that Ambassador Thi leave the
United States, there was a considerable pause in communications
from the Vietnamese. Soon after the conclusion of the espionage
case in May, however, the Vietnamese informed us of their
willingness to accept our invitation, extended in Paris the
previous year, to send
to send a team of experts to our MIA identification
facilities in Hawaii.
7
Following the successful conclusion
of this visit in July, the Vietnamese again began to indicate
á desire to meet with U.S. representatives and hinted publicly
and to other governments that they might be on the verge
of dropping their demand that U.S. economic assistance be part
of an agreement to normalize relations. Vietnamese statements
in this regard were somewhat ambiguous, however. There were no
official communications on the subject and a Congressional
+
+
delegation that visited Hanoi in August was unable to elicit a
direct statement that the Vietnamese were no longer demanding
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