|
|
|
|
TITLE: Vietnam Says US-Based Armed Group Behind Highlands Unrest |
AUTHOR: |
PUB: Times of India |
DATE: March 8, 2001 |
|
Vietnam accused a US-based minority rights group Wednesday of fomenting a wave of violent unrest which swept the central highlands last month, prompting the communist authorities to send in the army. The South Carolina-based Montagnard Foundation Inc. hatched a plot last September to infiltrate agents into Vietnam to organise an armed campaign for an independent state for the highlands' mainly Christian ethnic minorities, the public security ministry's mouthpiece, An Ninh The Gioi, charged. For the campign, MFI founder Kok Ksor recruited remnants of the United Front for the Liberation of Oppressed Races (FULRO), an opposition group which mounted an armed campaign against successive Vietnamese governments from the late 1950s until at least the early 1990s, the paper said. It was the first time that the communist authorities had admitted an armed element to last month's disturbances and the first time that they had explicitly acknowledged that some of the demonstrators sought a separate state. "Touring villages, we understood the wicked schemes of the FULRO force remnants in exile, who, backed by militant opposition groups abroad, fooled and excited some ethnic minority people to provoke the politically-charged disturbances," the paper said. "On September 22, 2000, in a small villa, owned by Kok Ksor, a former Saigon regime soldier, in Spartanburg City ... a group of FULRO remnants held an important meeting. "At the meeting, Kok Ksor stated the reasons of the meeting and said that he was the president of 'the Republic of Dega' and marked out the state's territory extending from Quang Tri to Binh Thuan on a map," the paper said. "He also delivered an "action plan" to attendants and appointed some people to return to Vietnam to develop forces." The official daily said Ksor had "talked about the backing of US president Bill Clinton" for his campaign for an independent state in the central highlands. (AFP) END |