WHEREAS, two full years have passed since the end of the war in Indochina without the offering of one dollar or one tool in US reconstruction aid, and in addition the new President of the United States has explicitly stated that we "have no responsibility for reparations" (March 24, 1977), and the House of Representatives also has twice passed specific prohibitions against economic aid to Vietnam (May 5 and May 12, 1977) as has the Senate on June 15, 1977; and

WHEREAS, healing and recovery in the Indochinese countries continue to be severely retarded by the direct legacies of our policies: unexploded mines, a countryside cratered, salted, bulldozed, and poisoned by herbicides, substantial food shortages, vast unemployment, and a crippled economy; and

WHEREAS, the Vietnamese government has given multiple signs of its good faith and readiness to negotiate the outstanding issues of the war towards the goals of normalizing diplomatic relations;

THEREFORE BE IT RESOLVED: That the General Assembly of the Unitarian Universalist Association reasserts its 1975 General Resolution on Reconstruction in Vietnam and urges churches, fellowships, and individual Unitarian Universalists to:

1. Entreat the Congress and the Carter administration, with the purpose of moving their "hearts and minds," to acknowledge the United States' responsibility for the destruction of three small agricultural countries and to act on our corresponding moral and legal responsibility to help heal those wounds;
2. Simultaneously urge an immediate lifting of the American diplomatic hostilities still in effect, i.e., the trade embargo, the ban on Vietnamese travel in the US, and frozen financial assets; and
3. Continue to raise support for private citizens' reconstruction aid (through the FRIENDSHIPMENT coalition) in order to provide some relief to the Vietnamese people and to stand as a cogent symbol to our government of its own unmet obligation.