News-Info-Alerts

To: ALL

From: Andi Wolos & Bob Necci

(POW-MIA InterNetwork)

Re: US Ambassador to Vietnam Nomination

Date: August 22, 2001

"Bush to Nominate Vietnam Ambassador
By BARRY SCHWEID, AP Diplomatic Writer

WASHINGTON (AP) - President Bush (news - web sites) intends to nominate Raymond F. Burghardt, head of the U.S. office in Taiwan, as ambassador to Vietnam, a senior U.S. official said Monday.

Burghardt has run the Taipei office, which is an embassy in all but name, for two years. The period has been marked by tension between China and Taiwan, including repeated threats by Beijing against the island it considers merely a renegade province.

Douglas ``Pete'' Peterson, a former three-term Democratic member of Congress, left the post in Hanoi last month. He has filed papers to run for governor of Florida against Jeb Bush, the president's brother, next year.

Burghardt, a 56-year-old New Yorker and a graduate of Columbia College, was the U.S. consul-general in Shanghai from 1997 to 1999, and served before that in the Philippines and South Korea (news - web sites).

Earlier, he specialized in Latin America, working as a U.S. diplomat in Honduras and Guatemala and as a National Security Council assistant on Latin America in the Reagan administration.

Taiwan's president Chen Shui-bian said Monday that Burghardt would become the second U.S. ambassador to Vietnam, and the senior U.S. official, insisting on anonymity, told The Associated Press that Bush intended to nominate him.

In the summer of 1999 Burghardt took over as director of the American Institute in Taiwan, the de facto U.S. Embassy there.

The United States ceased calling its office in Taipei an embassy after establishing diplomatic relations with China in 1979. The Bush administration has remained committed to providing Taiwan with weapons to help defend the island and its democratic government against Beijing.

Burghardt will need Senate confirmation to take the post. His nomination could provide a platform for debate about the extent of U.S. support for Taiwan and Bush's policy on China."