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Vietnam scraps US adoption agreement after damning report

AFP - Monday, April 28

HANOI, April 28, 2008 (AFP) - - Vietnam will end an adoption agreement with the Unites States this year, a communist government official said Monday, following a US report that alleged widespread baby-selling and corruption.

Vietnam will stop accepting new US adoption requests from July 1 and close all US adoption agencies by September 1 when the agreement runs out, said Vu Duc Long, head of the Justice Ministry's International Adoptions Department.

Long rejected the US embassy report, which alleged widespread abuses and a flourishing trade in babies since both countries resumed adoptions in 2006, three years after the programme was suspended over similar concerns.

"The US report includes a lot of distorted information, it is untrue," Long said. "The information shows a lack of goodwill and accuses Vietnam."

The nine-page US embassy report painted a grim picture of Vietnam's adoption system, which has boomed recently with more than 800 children being adopted last year alone by American parents through over 40 adoption agencies.

The report charged that some adoption agencies give large "donations" to Vietnamese orphanages that are the source of infants, many of whom are falsely identified as "deserted" or abandoned by their parents through fake paperwork.

"Throughout Vietnam, officials at orphanages connected with inter-country adoptions report a sharp increase in the number of deserted children since 2005," said the US report, released last week by the embassy in Hanoi.

"Orphanages in seven provinces report a 17-fold or greater increase in desertions. Officials at orphanages not connected with inter-country adoption, however, have not seen an increase in desertions," the report said.

The embassy said it "received credible reports that some adoption service providers pay 10,000 dollars per referred child to local facilitators."

"According to one of these facilitators, a significant portion of this money goes to the orphanage director, who is responsible for finding children."

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