US embassy cable - 05HANOI1065

UNCLAS SECTION 01 OF 02 HANOI 001065 
 
SIPDIS 
 
SENSITIVE 
 
STATE PLEASE PASS TO USTR EBRYAN 
STATE ALSO FOR E, EB AND EAP/BCLTV 
STATE ALSO PASS USAID FOR CHAPLIN/ANE 
USDOC FOR 4430/MAC/ASIA/OPB/VLC/HPPHO 
 
E.O. 12958: N/A 
TAGS: PGOV, PINR, EFIN, ECON, ETRD, VM, HIV/AIDS, AFLU, WTO 
SUBJECT: VIETNAM: NATIONAL ASSEMBLY OPENING 
 
Sensitive but Unclassified -- Please protect accordingly. 
 
1. (SBU) Summary.  Although WTO accession continues to be 
the focus at the spring National Assembly (NA) session that 
opened on May 5, the Government has yet to show the swift 
actions on the legislative agenda needed to meet its 
December 2005 accession target.  The Government also fails 
to acknowledge that HIV/AIDS is a disease rather than a 
social evil spread by drug addicts and prostitutes.  Other 
challenges for the year are avian influenza and inflation. 
End Summary. 
 
2. (U) National Assembly Chairman Nguyen Van An opened the 
legislature's spring session May 5 with remarks to the 
delegates, ministers and diplomats.  An identified a number 
of priorities for this session:  making laws, studying and 
approving the budget and reviewing reports from various 
government bodies.  He said that the Assembly would spend 
most of its time and efforts studying and passing 11 laws 
and one resolution while providing comments for other 12 
laws.  Legislation scheduled to be passed during this 
session includes the Revised Civil Code, the Law of Trade, 
revisions to the Law on Customs, the Law on Joining 
International Conventions, the Law on State Audits, the Law 
on National Defense and revisions to the Law on Mandatory 
Conscription.  Among the bills the NA will discuss is the 
Law on Corruption.  The Government had attempted to delay 
discussion of this bill until the fall NA session, but 
Chairman An successfully insisted it be dealt with now. 
 
3. (U) The NA will also issue a special resolution revising 
its legislative agenda.  This is intended to allow the NA to 
deal with the legislation necessary for Vietnam to accede to 
the WTO.  Under legislative regulations, a bill must be 
first discussed by the NA's core Standing Committee, then by 
the full Assembly in a session, before it can be voted on in 
the NA's subsequent session.  Chairman An has suggested that 
a special session of the Standing Committee may be assembled 
concurrent to the full NA session so that bills could be 
discussed by both bodies in turn, allowing them to be passed 
in the NA's fall session. 
 
4. (U) Also during this spring session, the Assembly will 
study the Government's report on the results of the 2004 
State budget, consider the State budget for 2005 and approve 
the final accounting for the 2003 State budget.  The 
Assembly will also supervise the implementation of NA's 
resolution on the Dung Quat oil refinery, review Standing 
Committee reports, including on health care, as well as 
reports from other NA Committees including the Ethnic 
Peoples Committee, and from the Chief Justice of the 
People's Supreme Court and from the Chief Inspector of the 
People's Supreme Inspectorate.  Finally the deputies will 
hear reports from the Vietnam Fatherland Front on voters' 
petitions and settling voters' petitions. 
 
5. (U) Of note during this session is that the NA's often 
contentious live televised questioning of Government 
Ministers has been revised to allow less time for speeches 
and more for direct questioning by Delegates.  Further, the 
NA televised live the floor debate of the Civil Code on May 
6, the first time to our knowledge that an open NA debate 
has been shown on television. 
 
6. (U) The Government of Vietnam (GVN) submitted its usual 
report to the National Assembly detailing its activities 
over the previous year.  (Standing Deputy Prime Minister 
Nguyen Tan Dung did the honors, standing in for Prime 
Minister Phan Van Khai who was in Australia.)  A key section 
was devoted to urgent preparations to join the World Trade 
Organization (WTO).  According to the report, negotiations 
to join WTO in 2004 and the first four months of 2005 have 
been carried out actively and achieved important results. 
The near term will be decisive, but the workload is still 
huge and complicated.  The GVN is focusing on urgently 
completing plans to conclude negotiations.  The GVN will 
intensify negotiations and stand firm on principles, but 
have enough flexibility to conclude negotiations soon.  The 
GVN will take steps to support the negotiations through 
political and foreign affairs channels.  In addition, the 
GVN will quickly complete drafts of laws and regulations to 
facilitate international integration and WTO negotiations. 
This will involve submitting 19 draft laws and three 
ordinances to the National Assembly in 2005.  Ten draft laws 
and one draft ordinance have been included in the agenda of 
the spring session.  To increase the priority of domestic 
preparations for accession, the Prime Minister requested 
government agencies to make specific integration plans and 
to intensify efforts to explain the benefits and challenges 
of WTO accession to people and enterprises.  In addition, 
the GVN will need to continue to advance administrative 
reform, make the transition to a market economy and improve 
the investment environment while developing production 
capacity, education and training as well as science and 
technology. 
 
7. (SBU) The report also noted other challenges, such as 
containing avian influenza and dealing with its economic 
damage, controlling inflation and halting the spread of 
HIV/AIDS.  Regrettably, the report still referred to 
HIV/AIDS as a social evil spread by drug addicts and 
prostitutes. 
 
8. Comment:  Although the GVN continues to say that WTO 
accession is its top priority, there has been little action 
on the forwarding of draft or enacted legislation to the 
Working Party in Geneva.  While the bilateral market access 
negotiations are intensifying, it will be impossible for 
Vietnam to meet its December 2005 accession target without 
significant rapid progress on the legislative side.  End 
Comment. 
 
MARINE