CANADA DEMANDS MOTHER BE FREED

High-level meetings step up pressure against Hanoi

OTTAWA - Canada continued to put diplomatic pressure on Vietnam yesterday,
demanding the release from prison of Tran Thi Cam, the mother of the
Canadian woman put to death on drug charges earlier this week.

Nguyen Thi Hiep, 43, was executed by firing squad Monday. In 1997, she was
convicted of smuggling 5.4 kilograms of heroin, hidden in an art object she
tried to take out of Vietnam, where she had gone to visit a sick relative.

Canadian police believe Nguyen might have been duped into carrying the
drugs.

Her mother, who is 74, was also convicted and given a life sentence.

"I've written today to the foreign minister of Vietnam. . . . and I have
specifically asked that they would give her mother a release under these
circumstances," Foreign Affairs Minister Lloyd Axworthy told reporters
yesterday.

Axworthy lashed back at Vietnam on Thursday by announcing that Canada had
withdrawn its ambassador, was suspending some assistance programs and was
boycotting this weekend's celebrations of the 25th anniversary of the end of
the Vietnam War.

"The measures we announced certainly got their attention," Axworthy said
yesterday in a telephone news conference from Africa.

Canada's ambassador to Vietnam, Cecile Latour, is meeting with officials in
Ottawa over the weekend and will propose options next week for possible
further diplomatic action by Canada, he said.

Vietnam announced yesterday it will free 12,264 prison inmates to coincide
with the new millennium and the anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War.

The list includes 29 foreigners, among them three U.S. citizens and others
from Hong Kong, Taiwan, Australia, Singapore, Cambodia and Laos. Tran is
apparently not on the list.

Officials declined to say whether any being freed in Communist Vietnam's
largest-ever amnesty were among those considered political or religious
prisoners by Western states.

"In light of the amnesty development, I think that just throws into very
stark contrast the difference in approach they're taking," Axworthy said.

And he reiterated that Canada is outraged at its treatment by Vietnam, a
country that Canada has "gone out of its way," to help.

Total Canadian foreign aid to Vietnam last year was $64 million. The aid is
distributed on a number of fronts, to support democratization and economic
reform, the justice system and rural development.

There are also a number of major projects in the pipeline, such as a $3
million initiative to promote good governance, a $5 million proposal on
legal reform, $10 million to reduce rural poverty in mountainous communities
in Thanh Hoa province and a $7 million venture for rural poor in Soc Trang
province.

A Western diplomat said the names of the 29 freed prisoners were likely to
trickle out in coming days and weeks, but formal announcements were unlikely
as Hanoi does not admit to holding political or religious prisoners.

In 1998, Amnesty International listed more than 40 prisoners held in Vietnam
for political reasons but said the total could be higher.

A U.S. State Department report said other sources put the figure at 100 to
150 persons. It says prisoners include Buddhist monks, Catholic priests and
ethnic Hmong protestants.

"We don't care very much about the U.S. report on human rights or the list
regarded by the department of state as human rights cases," the chairman of
the office of the president Nguyen Canh Dinh told reporters yesterday.

Meanwhile, Arizona Senator John McCain, in Vietnam to mark the anniversary
and to help boost U.S. ties with its former enemy, said yesterday the wrong
side won the war, adding to earlier comments that accused the Communists of
torturing PoWs.

McCain was held captive 5 1/2 years in Hanoi after his A-4 plane was shot
down Oct. 26, 1967, while on a bombing run on the North Vietnamese capital.

He also criticized what he said was increasing corruption in the country and
an unwillingness on the part of some officials to improve U.S.-Vietnamese
ties.

Irritated by McCain's remarks about torture, Hanoi dismissed the allegations
as untrue, accusing the United States of bringing the war upon the
Vietnamese and committing "horrendous crimes."

With files from Associated Press