Aust, to open Hanoi ties

Press, 5 July 1983, Page 10

Aust, to open Hanoi ties

NZPA Bangkok Australia brought . its Indo-China peace plan back to A.S.E.A.N. yesterday with the new announcement that it would open its bilateral relationship with Vietnam. The Foreign Affairs Minister, Mr Bill Hayden, has said that Australia would back Vietnam’s right to multilateral aid through United Nations agencies and open ministerial and cultural exchanges between the two countries. The move will be seen as ending Vietnam’s international isolation over its invasion of Kampuchea, and was expected to be a topic of discussion when Mr Hayden met Thailand’s Foreign Minister, Air Chief Marshal Siddhi Savetsila.

Earlier, Mr Hayden said that after talks in Hanoi it was clear Vietnamese

troops would stay in Kampuchea “until hell freezes over.” The Vietnamese had made it clear to him that military pressure, whether from China or from the Thai-border-based insurgents in Kampuchea, would not bring about a withdrawal of Hanoi’s estimated 180,000-man force. Mr Hayden returned to Bangkok from Laos and Vietnam saying that he had been “quite successful so far” in his attempt to find a common ground between Vietnam and non-Commun-ist South-East Asia that might lead to Kampuchean settlement talks.

Vietnam invaded Kampuchea in December, 1978, and ousted the Chinese-backed Khmer Rouge regime, now part of a coalition Government led by Prince Norodom Sihanouk.