Hanoi - Vietnamese government officials, meeting Tuesday morning with leaders of Hanoi's Catholic Church, said they would return the former Vatican embassy to the church if it stops the demonstrations that have occupied the site in recent weeks, according to a priest who attended the meeting. Father Peter Thanh, a priest from the diocese of Ho Chi Minh City, said Deputy Minister of Public Security Nguyen Van Huong had promised to resolve the issue "step by step," ending with the transfer of the property to the church.
In some of the largest open protests ever seen in Communist Vietnam, hundreds of Catholic clergy and their followers have staged repeated vigils at the site since December 18.
Church leaders say the building, which housed the Vatican's embassy beginning in 1950, was illegally confiscated from the Vietnamese Catholic Church, and have been asking for its return for three years.
The People's Committee of Hanoi, the city's governing body, says the land was turned over to city management by a priest in 1961. The building is in the center of Hanoi's tourist district, where land prices run well over 1,000 dollars per square meter.
After dozens of protestors occupied the site this weekend, city authorities set a deadline of 5 pm Sunday for demonstrators to disperse.
But the demonstrators were allowed to remain. "[Deputy Minister Huong] said he was on a trip, and came back on Sunday in time to stop the use of measures to disperse people," Thanh said.
The agreement involves measures by both sides to show good faith. As a first step, the government will remove a restaurant and parking lot on the site, while the church promised to clear away tents erected by the demonstrators.
"The minister said the government did not want to lose face," Thanh said. He said the church would not clear away a crucifix and a statue of the Virgin Mary demonstrators erected on the property until they had a firm agreement to return the land.
Vietnam's Communist government has become increasingly tolerant of religious diversity in recent years, easing the conflicts between church and state which characterized the 1950s through 1970s.
Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung last year became the first Vietnamese leader to visit the Vatican, and the government has officially recognized several new evangelical churches.
But the Communists confiscated large amounts of Catholic Church property in northern Vietnam after they came to power in 1954, and in southern Vietnam after taking control there in 1975.
As property rights have become institutionalized in Vietnam's increasingly privatized economy in recent years, several disputes over real-estate ownership have arisen.
