OTTAWA SLAPS SANCTIONS ON HANOI OVER EXECUTION

HANOI - Canada has slapped new sanctions on Vietnam and cut off all
ministerial-level contacts following last week's execution of a
Canadian woman charged with drug trafficking in Hanoi.

"We deplore this absolutely unacceptable conduct of the government of
Vietnam," Canadian Prime Minister Jean Chretien told the House of
Commons late Monday.

"We have taken all steps possible to make sure it (Vietnam)
understands that such action cannot be acceptable and that the
Canadian government absolutely condemns it."

Ottawa has already adamantly protested the April 25 execution of
Nguyen Thi Hiep, a Canadian citizen born in Vietnam, who was shot by a
firing squad in Hanoi on heroin trafficking charges.

She was the first holder of a Western passport to be put to death in
Vietnam for drug smuggling and her death was seen by observers as a
signal of an intensifying crackdown in the war on drugs.

In a statement outlining the sanctions, Foreign Minister Lloyd
Axworthy said: "The Vietnamese government's public pronouncements
about its reasons for proceeding with the execution have not addressed
the concerns we raised with them.

"All ministerial level contact between Canada and Vietnam is
suspended" as of May 1, the statement said.

Hiep, 44, left Vietnam in 1981. She was arrested in April 1996 while
in Vietnam on a tourist visa, along with her mother, Tran Thi Cam, 73,
who still held a Vietnamese passport.

Hiep was condemned to death and her mother to life imprisonment after
they were arrested at Hanoi's Noi Bai International Airport for
allegedly trying to smuggle 5kg of heroin to Hong Kong.