Word: viets
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...million people fear that harboring such vessels will invite attack in the event of a war between the superpowers. The U.S., however, believes this continued access to the ports is necessary because of the growing Soviet presence in the southwestern Pacific. The use of air and maritime facilities in Viet Nam, most notably the former U.S. naval base at Cam Ranh Bay, has led to substantially greater Soviet activity in the region in recent years. Explained Shultz to his hosts: "It is not just a question of insisting on access, but of how a military alliance works. What kind...
...nearly four years the Khmer Rouge tore through their homeland, smashing temples, slitting throats, nailing old women to the walls of their houses, beating babies to death against trees. By late 1978, when Viet Nam invaded Kampuchea, as many as 3 million of the country's 7 million people were dead. Yet those who survived reportedly had worse in store for them. In one episode, soldiers from neighboring Thailand pushed 826 Kampuchean refugees over a cliff; in another, they forced 43,000 to walk home in the dark down treacherous mountain paths surrounded by minefields...
Throughout the years of the Khmer Rouge atrocities, claims Shawcross, most Westerners remained either ignorant or downright skeptical of refugee reports of mass slaughter, but as soon as Viet Nam invaded and permitted a few foreigners to inspect the ghostly nation, the West responded vigorously. The press reported a "holocaust"; Washington increased aid to Kampuchean refugees by a factor of ten (to $69 million); five international relief agencies, including the International Committee of the Red Cross and the United Nations Children's Fund, 60 private volunteer bodies and the interests of 60 governments converged upon the broken land...
...international relief agencies were, much of the time, rendered powerless both by their apolitical status and by the recalcitrance of the regime that Viet Nam had installed. Even their successes, says Shawcross, sometimes proved tragically double-edged. Within two years of the Kampuchean government's 1979 announcement that a famine had pushed more than 2 million people to the brink of starvation, the West poured in more than $600 million worth of supplies. Up to four-fifths of the shipments never reached the hollow-eyed, malarial civilians who needed them most. Some of the rice remained stockpiled in warehouses...
China has a vested interest in keeping the border war going. With troops positioned along the frontier, Viet Nam has been unwilling to carry out a full-scale offensive against Chinese-backed guerrillas next door, in Kampuchea. China is not the only neighbor upset with Viet Nam. At a summit of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN) in Indonesia last week, attended by U.S. Secretary of State George Shultz, the region's foreign ministers joined in condemning Viet Nam's "illegal occupation" of Kampuchea...