Viet Nam Today: Looking for Friends

To the 22-man congressional delegation that flew into Hanoi's Noi Bai airport last week, there was an ominous familiarity about the landscape. Water-filled bomb craters still pockmarked the lush rice paddies. Camouflaged antiaircraft guns poked up their snouts on the perimeter of the landing field, where two huge Soviet An-22 transport planes rested. But on the ground, all the reminders of that painful land war in Southeast Asia were washed away in atmospherics of amiability. Said Tran Quang Co, head of the North American section of Viet Nam's foreign ministry, prior to a welcoming banquet for the American visitors: "We hope that we can move to a new stage in relations between our two peoples."

That kind of broad diplomatic wooing of the U.S. has suddenly come into fashion in Viet Nam. The nation is embroiled in a fratricidal war, now more than two years old, with the neighboring--and ultrafanatical--Communist regime in Cambodia, and drifting at the same time into hostilities with another former friend, the People's Republic of China. The pro-American trend in Hanoi is all the more notable given the starchy posture of the victorious Vietnamese regime following the fall of Saigon in April 1975. For more than three years the government, headed by Premier Pham Van Dong, 72, insisted that the U.S. pay $3.25 billion in "war reparations" as an absolute precondition to any normal diplomatic relationship. Although Hanoi has yet to say so officially, that galling proviso has now been withdrawn.

There was plenty of good will on display for the delegation of eight U.S. Congressmen and their aides, headed by Mississippi Democrat Gillespie V. ("Sonny") Montgomery. The Americans were on a six-day tour of Viet Nam and Laos, investigating the fate of 340 U.S. servicemen still listed officially as missing in action during the Viet Nam War.* At the first talk between Vietnamese officials and Montgomery's contingent, Deputy Foreign Minister Phan Hien announced that the bodies of eleven of the M.I.A.s had been recovered, and at week's end the remains were ferried home. Montgomery concluded from his conversations that the Vietnamese were making a "sincere effort" to cooperate. Said he: "This should close the last sad chapter in the war between the two nations."

In fact, a happy denouement still remains to be written. For a real breakthrough in relations to take place, the U.S. must lift its trade embargo against Viet Nam and allow at least a modest level of aid to flow there. There is no great rush on the part of the U.S. Government to proceed with either aid or trade. Says one State Department official: "We need to know clearly and precisely just what the Vietnamese really want, and then take a long look at the situation."

The situation from the Vietnamese point of view is an increasingly claustrophobic one. Its war with Cambodia shows every sign of being a long-run affair and is a constant drain on national energies. On the other hand, the nature of the brutal Cambodian regime since 1975 is such that even Senator George McGovern--who campaigned for the presidency as a passionate foe of U.S. Viet Nam policy--suggested last week that armed international intervention might be necessary.

Viet Nam is also suffering the effects of a sudden withdrawal of aid by China last June, and is growing steadily more apprehensive as relations with Peking continue to degenerate. Last week, the mutual dislike blossomed into outright violence at the so-called Friendship border gate between the two countries, located 100 miles northeast of Hanoi. Hanoi claimed that two Vietnamese were killed and 25 others wounded, while Peking charged that four Chinese had died and "dozens" were seriously injured.

Moreover, the Vietnamese countryside has not recovered from the ravages of the war that ended in 1975. The country is suffering from a chronic food shortage, with an estimated shortfall in the rice harvest last year of 1.5 million metric tons. Building materials are scarce and there is a shortage of skilled manpower.

All of those concerns go a long way toward explaining the tractability of the Vietnamese government toward its former foe. As Premier Dong expressed it in an hour-long interview with the Congressmen: "The wind is behind us" in promoting closer Hanoi-Washington ties. Earlier, Dong had told an interviewer: "We have no interest whatsoever in creating problems detrimental to our country's reconstruction."

So forthcoming were the Vietnamese that the U.S. delegation, which had allotted plenty of time for arguing, soon had little to do but see the sights. Trouble was that in the new Viet Nam the sights were not what they used to be. "Hanoi is now a faded dowager of a city," cabled TIME Hong Kong Correspondent Richard Bernstein, who accompanied the Congressmen on their tour. "The old elegance and grace are still there in the wide, tree-lined boulevards and the colonial-era buildings, but the place is badly in need of some paint, some renewal, some energy. The city is calm, quiet and green, but also poor, drab and dull. Whatever improvement in living standard there has been, if any, has not been dramatic. At night, Hanoi reverts to a kind of overgrown country village. Except for an occasional bicycle or a strolling policeman or two, there is virtually nobody on the silent, dark and lifeless streets."

During the daytime, what action there is tends to center on the city's private-enterprise markets, which the Hanoi regime has sensibly avoided stamping out. The markets afford most Hanoi citizens a supplement to their meager official rations--but at a huge price. Fresh fish cost $1.77 a pound, while the average worker's salary amounts to only $30 a month.

There is more bustle in the South, particularly in Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon). Motorcycles and motor scooters still crowd the streets, and there are such remaining signs of "bourgeois decadence" as beauty parlors and blue jeans. But the U.S. embassy building now houses Viet Nam's state petroleum agency; the enormous former U.S. AID compound is headquarters for Saigonese trade-union organizations. The notoriously sinful La Vie en Rose bar has been subdivided into small meeting halls. Night life in general has been thoroughly quelled by the rectitudinous Communists.

An unwholesome anxiety pervades over much of Cholon, Saigon's ethnic Chinese district, where on some streets half the shops are tightly shuttered. The Chinese have been particularly hard hit by a government crackdown on private enterprise that began in March. Most larger businesses were taken over by the government, and thousands of Chinese have fled the country or are waiting, miserably and without shelter, at the Viet Nam-China border for the chance to get out. An estimated 8,000 refugees--Chinese and non-Chinese--have found their way to Hong Kong alone since the fall of Saigon. Another 10,000 or so have made it to France.

Much of the emigration is the consequence of Hanoi's efforts to relocate southern urban residents in so-called New Economic Zones--often tracts of uncultivated jungle. Officially, the relocations are voluntary. Says one Communist official: "We try to persuade them." Maybe. But during their Saigon stay, members of the U.S. delegation observed a squad of Vietnamese soldiers, armed with AK-47 assault rifles, descending on Cholon to round up a truckload of ethnic Chinese for no apparent reason.

By whatever means, the Vietnamese government has "persuaded" about 700,000 people to move to the economic zones during the past three years--far fewer than authorities would like. During the same period, Saigon's population has declined from 4.5 million to 3.5 million; Hanoi would like to see it reduced by another 1 million. Many people, however, manage to escape from the New Economic Zones and return to the former southern capital clandestinely. Communist officials view the recidivism philosophically. Says one: "It's natural. Life is very hard in the New Economic Zones. It's even dangerous, since there are still unexploded mines there. We have had some casualties."

The U.S. visitors were mildly surprised at the candor of their hosts. Officials freely admit, for example, that bribery occurs within the Vietnamese bureaucracy, though they insist that corruption is "not common." In fact, it is very common indeed. An exit visa can be bought with $2,000 in gold, and the cost of other services varies accordingly.

Frankness, however limited, is one sign of the seriousness with which the regime treats its problems. Another sign is the unabashed pitch for U.S. aid. After three decades of continuous fighting, the Vietnamese are tired of struggle--and of what it has brought them. It is perhaps the final irony of the Viet Nam War that Hanoi, having persevered over its former enemies, now looks to Washington for help in achieving its socialist Utopia.

* Of the M.I.A.s, 200 are believed to be in Viet Nam, 124 in Laos, 16 in Cambodia.

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