By Carol Brightman
There was a certain buzz to this get-together of Excellencies from Indochina with Ladies and Gentlemen from America. You could hear it in the excited hum of voices rising from the hangar-like dining room which the Chase Manhattan Bank made available for the Fund for Reconciliation and Development’s second annual dinner with Ministers of Cambodia, Laos, and Vietnam.
The event, which took place in New York on September 18, was coordinated by the Fund for Reconciliation and Development and co-sponsored by Aid to Southeast Asia, the America Chamber of Commerce (Vietnam), the Asia Society, the Chase Manhattan Bank, Church World Service and Witness, Institute of International Education, Oxfam America, US-Vietnam Trade Council, and Vietnam Veterans of America. Cambodian, Laotian and Vietnamese cuisine was provided by area restaurants; the embroidered napery came from Lao Cotton.
For a great many present, the gathering was a reunion. Laos’ Minister to the Office of the President Soubanh Srithirath struck a common chord when he said over dinner: “This is the second year that we meet, and I am happy to see American friends…again.” The “friends” included some 127 people from the business world, foundations, universities, non-governmental aid and development organizations. Among the additional 36 special guests from Indochina were the three Permanent Representatives to the UN: HE Ouch Borith, Cambodia; HE Alounkeo Kittikhoun, Laos; HE Nguyen Thanh Chau, Vietnam; along with the Ambassadors to the US: HE Eng Roland, Cambodia; HE Vang Rattanavong, Laos; HE Le Van Bang, Vietnam, and HE Nguyen Tam Chien, Vice Minister of Foreign Affairs of Vietnam; all of whom were in town (together with the Ministers) for UN meetings.
The presence of so many high-level government officials offered both friends and newcomers a chance to talk outside channels about a host of projects and issues of mutual interest. This is what the dinner is all about, a “working dinner,” Vietnam’s Foreign Minister called it, but if there was more electricity in the air than usual it may have been because in the long process of reconciliation in which this growing community is involved, a time of troubles has been largely left behind.
For all three ministers who addressed the guests—after introductory remarks from Chase’s Carter Booth, Oxfam America’s Raymond Offenhieser and FRD’s John McAuliff—the principle trouble was the financial crisis that shook Asian markets in the late 1990s. Cambodia’s Foreign Minister Nam Hong, however, speaking first, celebrated progress on two fronts: economic and political. “In 1999 [Cambodia’s] GDP growth rose to 4.3% after plummeting to 1% in 1997 and 1998,” he said; adding that inflation rates have fallen to almost nothing after rising to 12.6% in 1998. Exports have increased 22% thanks mainly to Cambodia’s growing garment industry, which benefits from the Generalized System of Preferences(GSP) and Normal Trade Relations status with the US, EU, Japan, Canada and Australia.
The minister stated that the Royal Government’s “Political Program” has contributed to this growth, as well as to the “unprecedented peace and stability” which has “prevailed in the past 22 months” (that is, since the formation of the present coalition government in November 1998). Cambodia’s “strategic motto,” he said, mixing economic and political goals, is “poverty reduction through high economic growth and social equity over the long term.”
To reach these goals, Cambodia has accorded priority to the development of six sectors: agriculture, physical infrastructure, electrical power supply, human resource development, light industries, and tourism. To achieve success in the first, he noted, the government faces “the daunting task [of] provid[ing] irrigation services to farmers.”
Cambodia’s Foreign Minister made clear that his government looks to private investment as the chief means for developing the country and alleviating poverty. To this end Phnom Penh is moving aggressively to remove the impediments to [foreign] investments…The Law of Investment of Cambodia,” he pointed out, “is the most liberal one in the region.”
Laos’s Minister, HE Soubanh Srithirath, announced that on December 2, 2000, the Lao
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