GOP lawmaker calls for ambassador to Vietnam to be fired

{mosads}Wolf goes on to accuse Shear of stonewalling and refusing to turn over the list of people invited to the reception without clearing it through the State Department, which could take several weeks. Wolf said Shear told him he needed to maintain a “balance” in who was invited to the Independence Day event.

“Ambassador Shear’s entire handling of this issue has been unacceptable,” Wolf wrote. “He showed little to no initiative in the case of Dr. Quan. Then, after appearing to recognize the short-sightedness of this approach, he agreed to host an Independence Day event at the embassy attended by human rights and democracy activists — only to go back on his word and mislead me about his intentions. Finally, when posed with a simple congressional request for additional information about the guest list at a U.S. embassy event, he was uncooperative at best and obstructionist at worst”

Wolf represents a northern Virginia district with a sizable presence of Vietnamese-Americans, many of them refugees. He has long championed human-rights causes and denounced crackdowns against Christians in the country, and called on Obama to appoint a Vietnamese-American ambassador — “someone who understands the country, the language, and the oppressive nature of the government having experienced it themselves before coming to the U.S. Such an individual would not be tempted to maintain smooth bilateral relations at all costs.”

Shear was sworn in as ambassador in August 2011 after serving since 2009 as deputy assistant secretary in the Bureau of East Asian and Pacific Affairs at the Department of State. His nomination was held up temporarily by Sens. Dick Lugar (R-Ind.) and Marco Rubio (R-Fla.) over concerns that Vietnamese children in the process of getting adopted by U.S. citizens were being left in limbo.