AUSTRALIA. VIETNAMESE LEADER PLEADS TO STOP HANGING OF NGUYEN TUONG VAN

the state of Victoria’s most senior Vietnamese leader called on Australian Prime Minister John Howard to state unequivocally that Melbourne's Nguyen Tuong Van should not hang in Singapore. Nguyen Phong called on Howard to show leadership and tell the Singapore Government that he and most Australians did not want Nguyen to be executed. Nguyen, president of the Victorian chapter of the Vietnamese Community in Australia, said that Howard would fail in his duty as a leader if he did not speak up for the view of the majority of Australians.
"This is the hour. This is the time for Mr Howard to be unequivocal," Nguyen said.
"Not to say 'yes, spare his life, but I can understand if you go ahead and kill him'.
"This is the time when Mr Howard, on behalf of us all, can do something very powerful." Thich Phuc Tan, abbot of Victoria's Quang Minh Temple, said nothing would be achieved by hanging Nguyen.
"You cannot kill a lamb to educate a wolf," said Tan, who was also vice-president of the World Buddhist Foundation.
Tan appealed to the public to understand that Nguyen was "a child of Australia who deserves to be treated by the Singaporeans humanitarily, and not as a statistic to be terminated".