From the Office of Senator Kerry

Friday, December 15, 2000

Washington, DC – The Senate today passed Senator John F. Kerry's Vietnam Education Foundation Act, sponsored by the Senate's Vietnam combat veterans – Senators Kerry, McCain, Kerrey, Hagel, Robb, and Cleland. The legislation establishes a new long-term educational exchange program between the United States and Vietnam, which will provide fellowships for Vietnamese students to study in the United States at the graduate and post-graduate level. The program will focus on the sciences, including environmental science, math, technology and computer science, and medicine, and will also enable American professors to teach in these fields in Vietnamese institutions. The Kerry bill establishes a new, independent agency in the executive branch, the Vietnam Education Foundation, to administer the program. The bill authorizes $5,000,000 in fiscal year 2001. Beginning in fiscal year 2002, the Secretary of the Treasury must transfer $5,000,000 annually to the Foundation from debt repayments that Vietnam is making to the United States in settlement of debt incurred prior to 1976 by the Republic of South Vietnam. The transfers continue through fiscal year 2018. The Foundation can also solicit private contributions.

"This exchange program ushers in a new era of learning and cooperation, and will help us further strengthen the new, constructive relationship that we have built with Vietnam over the last decade," said Senator Kerry. "The American people today think of Vietnam not just as a war, but as a country where we have a broad range of interests. To promote these interests effectively, we must have a normal, working relationship with Vietnam -- and by helping to integrate Vietnam into a new globalized, knowledge economy, these educational exchanges will will go a long way in charting an important long term course for both the United States and Vietnam."

There is successful precedent for the kind of exchange program this legislation creates. In 1908 the United States returned a portion of the Boxer indemnity bond to China for the purpose of educating Chinese students in the American institutions. Since 1975, the Japanese-American Friendship Commission has been funding educational and cultural exchanges through the debt repaid by Japan to the United States for the return of Okinawa.

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