Week in Review

Summit in Vietnam

Coverage of President Bush’s visit to Vietnam for an economic summit this weekend has highlighted the progress made by that country toward the opening of its economic and political systems. But as our State Department reporter Nicholas Kralev learned last week, it still has a way to go.

Thanks largely to the efforts of a young press officer at the Vietnamese Embassy in Washington, we have developed a good working relationship with Vietnam over the past few years. The officer, Bach Ngoc Chien, is now in Hanoi with a prominent position at the Foreign Ministry, so when Mr. Kralev learned that Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice would be traveling to Vietnam for the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum, he decided to take advantage.

Mr. Kralev e-mailed Mr. Chien to ask for a pre-summit interview with Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung, the nation’s forward-looking and youthful leader who took charge about a year ago.

Mr. Chien asked Mr. Kralev to send a series of questions; Mr. Kralev replied that we could not do that, but we could describe the general areas he was interested in talking about.

About two weeks later, Mr. Chien e-mailed again to say it was very difficult because the prime minister does not generally give interviews to the press. He suggested that we submit a list of questions in writing and he would try to get Mr. Dung to reply in kind.

Mr. Kralev responded that we were not interested in doing that, and the matter was dropped for a while. When we learned that Miss Rice was not planning to visit any other countries on the trip to Vietnam, we decided Mr. Kralev would not go at all since we would have a White House reporter traveling with Mr. Bush.

Mr. Chien e-mailed again at the end of October to say the prime minister had agreed to do the interview after all. Mr. Kralev pressed for a firm date and was finally told it would take place on Monday or Tuesday of last week. He scrambled to get a visa and airline ticket and got to Hanoi last weekend.

At the Hanoi Hilton

On Sunday, Mr. Kralev was told the interview would take place between 4 and 6 p.m. the following day and that he should stand by in his hotel room for a phone call. The call never came, and at the end of the day, Mr. Kralev was told Mr. Dung had been too busy, but perhaps the interview could be done on Tuesday.

But Tuesday morning — Monday night in Washington — Hanoi got a jolt: the U.S. House of Representatives turned down what had been expected to be a routine approval of permanent normalized trading status for Vietnam.

Mr. Kralev spent another long day waiting at his hotel — the Hanoi Hilton — feeling a bit like a prisoner, with apologies to Sen. John McCain, who knew a much different “Hanoi Hilton.” At one point Mr. Kralev was told that the prime minister was too tired to do the interview. Finally, he was told Mr. Dung didn’t want to do it because of the failure of the trade bill.

I was hosting a delegation led by the Haitian finance minister here at The Times when I learned of the decision. An American adviser to the Haitian minister gasped when I explained what had happened: “That is exactly the wrong thing to do,” he said.

Exactly. Had the interview gone ahead, the prime minister would have had an opportunity through our pages to tell the reticent congressmen why he thought the trade deal was important to both countries and why they should revisit the bill as soon as possible.

Instead, he got a front-page story quoting various dissidents in Vietnam arguing against passage of the bill, saying any change in Vietnam’s trade status should be tied to greater progress on human rights. Mr. Kralev, after all, had plenty of time in that hotel room to work the phones and see what kind of story he could find.

Mr. Chien, to his credit, took Mr. Kralev to dinner the following day and apologized profusely. But from his government’s point of view, the damage was done.

• David W. Jones is the foreign editor of The Washington Times. His e-mail address is djones@washingtontimes.com.