Threatening A Letter

PRESIDENT BUSH’S DESIRE TO SPEED UP NORMALIZATION OF relations with Vietnam hit a snag just before Senator John Kerry’s delegation left for Hanoi. Kerry was going to deliver a letter to the Vietnamese all but lifting the economic embargo. But ANN MILLS GRIFFITHS, executive director of the National League of Families of American Prisoners and Missing in Southeast Asia, threatened to go very public with her opposition on the eve of the mission. Griffiths objects to normalizing relations before a fuller accounting of American prisoners and casualties is made. The White House backed down, substituting an innocuous letter of greeting.