Summary

STATE DEPARTMENT SPOKESWOMEN CHRISTINE SHELLY BRIEFS REPORTERS AND COMMENTS ON VIETNAM, ADAMS VISA STATUS.

Source CONUS Archive
Record ID 244000
Story Slug State Department Briefing (1994)
Location WASHINGTON, DC
Format TVD
Date 1/28/1994
Archive Time 31:07
TRT 5:33
Video Description NEWS CONFERENCE
Description STATE DEPARTMENT SPOKESWOMEN CHRISTINE SHELLY BRIEFS REPORTERS AND COMMENTS ON VIETNAM, ADAMS VISA STATUS.
Script (SUGGESTED TRANSCRIPT OF AUDIO) 1:10 you have a reaction to the vote yesterday in the Senate? Unknown Speaker 1:14 Well, I think I don't have a lot to say on it. I think that the debate itself, the President, as you know, has linked the further progress in our relations with Vietnam to achieving the fullest possible accounting and the Prisoner of War missing an action issue. As you certainly also know, from the most recent statements from the White House, no decision has been made there on the lifting of the trade embargo. And there isn't any, any timeframe for reaching such a decision. It's something which remains under review, and the administration has indicated that it would consider the views of all sides of this issue. And that certainly includes very much the Senate to resolution and its expression of views. As it continues, as it keeps this this issue under review, we've made it very clear that we need that it is the policy of this administration, that there'll be this full accounting. And I think that as we have have gone over this, and we've we've revisited this issue of the accounting, and what's happened in the most recent timeframe, in fact, we have been, have been pleased with the degree of cooperation which has occurred on this. I think that there are some who believe that, you know, to move on to the, you know, the normalization of relations, that that this could perhaps give an even greater impetus to this. There are others who think that, that the the continued to accounting absolutely must come first. I think that that there are arguments that can be made on both sides, but I don't think the administration has specifically taken a position on one or the other, the key thing for us is to get to the point where we are completely satisfied with the accounting for the POWs in the MIS, and then to take things from there. No, I think that we feel that they are making that the Vietnamese government is continues to make a rather considerable effort on this. And I think we gave a fairly detailed account, when, when Winston Lord went there, the last time about some of the things that had happened, and about the opening up of some of the archives and things like that, which is, in fact, what was a major step forward in terms of making information available to us as well as specific cases in which they have come in with information. So I don't think that we have any indication that that there's been a slackening in this, and certainly the trend has been very much an upward one. And so if a specific action, you know, were to accelerate that or if we felt that it would somehow break some kind of a log jam. I don't think that we feel that there is a logjam. I think we feel there's been steady progress on this. In making a decision on this about whether or not to grant him a waiver of his ineligibility, which we had described and before, we felt that it was important for us to have an understanding of Gerry Adams position on achieving peace in Northern Ireland. We can have consulted quite a bit with the Irish and the British government's on this. And as in as a consequence of those those consultations we instructed our embassy in in Dublin and our consulate general in Belfast to determine whether or not to Gerry Adams would be prepared to publicly renounce violence and to support the Joint Declaration, which of course, is also something that the United States supports very strongly as well. And, and we have indicated that our decision on whether or not to provide him with a visa would would depend on his response. I think our move was designed to demonstrate that that we recognize that Adams has an important role. role to play in securing peace and we certainly would like to encourage him to move in the right direction. And I think that's what what we felt it was a kind of gesture or a kind of overture to him. But I think we felt that it was simply necessary to know in the aftermath of the Joint Declaration where he was on violence and on the joint declaration, and that, depending on what his response was to our queries on this, we could then determine whether or not we would want to recommend a waiver for his visa ineligibility.
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