Word: viet
(lookup in dictionary)
(lookup stats)
Dates: all
Sort By: most recent first
(reverse)
...dislodge them. The Syrians have tried to stabilize the country maintaining a balance of power?initially, by moving against an insurgent Palestinian and Muslim left, more recently by attacking pro-Israeli Christians who threaten to partition the country. But for Syrian President Hafez Assad, Lebanon threatens to become a Viet Nam: by pulling his forces out, he risks the renewal of civil war and possibly the installation of a pro-Israeli government in Beirut; by keeping his troops in Lebanon indefinitely, he creates a costly morale and manpower drain on his own country. TIME Correspondent Dean Brelis, recently in Syria...
...rhetorical battles that have raged between Peking and Hanoi since May, the principal casualties have been the Chinese residents of Viet Nam. Caught in a crossfire of conflicting national and political interests, 160,000 refugees have already made the trek across the Vietnamese border into China's Yunnan and Kwangsi provinces. The Viet Nam government has explained the exodus by charging that Peking's embassy in Hanoi had hired agents provocateurs to roil Viet Nam's 1.2 million Hoa (ethnic Chinese) and induce them to leave the country. Hanoi produced two such alleged agents who "confessed" that they had plotted...
Dismissing Hanoi's accusations as "vile slanders and scurrilous charges," Peking answered that Viet Nam had "ostracized, persecuted and expelled Chinese residents on a mass scale." To prove that charge, government officials organized press conferences for foreign newsmen in border areas where Hoa refugees were living in improvised camps. Meanwhile, China's official propaganda machine ground out endless grim tales. An old woman from Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon) recounted how all her possessions had been seized. "Not even her wardrobe, beds, stools, bowls and saucers were spared," according to one report. She was also threatened with resettlement...
...invective, both countries have agreed to resume discussions of their differences in Hanoi next week. Foreign observers, however, doubt that the low-level talks will do much to resolve what appear to be the real reasons for the neighborly conflict: Hanoi's anger at Chinese support for Viet Nam's hostile neighbor, Cambodia, and Peking's fear of expanding Soviet influence in Viet...
Sinologists are divided on whether China's self-defeating policy toward Viet Nam is caused by inexperience in the conduct of foreign policy, by the notoriously prickly personality of Teng Hsiao-p'ing, or by some obscure power struggle in Peking. Whatever the reason, China's new activism is not only turning old enemies into new friends, but old friends into new enemies...