February 1990, Vietnam and China rapidly moved to re-establish formal diplomatic relations. In November 1991, newly elected Vietnamese Prime Minister Võ Văn Kiệt travelled to Beijing and met his Chinese counterpart, Li Peng, and they issued an 11-point communiqué re-establishing diplomatic ties between the two countries after 10 years without formal relations. The end of the Cambodian conflict also brought an end to the ASEAN-imposed trade and aid embargo which had been in place since 1979. In January 1990, Thai Prime Minister Chatichai Choonhavan publicly voiced his support for Vietnam, and the rest of Indochina, to gain admission into ASEAN. In the period between late 1991 and early 1992, Vietnam restored relations with several member nations of ASEAN. As a result, between 1991 and 1994, investments from ASEAN countries made up 15 percent of direct foreign investment in Vietnam. Aside from the obvious economic benefits, ASEAN also provided a peaceful environment that guaranteed Vietnam's national security against foreign threats in the post-Cold War era, when Soviet aid was no longer available. Thus, on 28 July 1995, Vietnam officially became the seventh member of ASEAN, after leading ASEAN officials invited Vietnam to join at the ASEAN Ministerial Meeting in Bangkok in 1994. Then, in August 1995, the U.S. Liaison Office in Hanoi was upgraded to Embassy status, after U.S. President Bill Clinton announced a formal normalisation of diplomatic relations with Vietnam on 11 July 1995, thereby ending Vietnam's isolation from the United States. Environmental impacts Cambodia and Vietnam's forest cover underwent drastic reductions following the end of the Khmer Rouge government. The fall of Khmer Rouge was attributed to Vietnamese troops overthrowing the government and the occupation of Phnom Penh, establishing the People's Republic of Kampuchea (PRK) in 1978. With lack of international support by the end of the Cold War, the Khmer Rouge struggled to rebuild itself. In an attempt to increase revenue and regain power, they established themselves along the Thailand-Cambodia border in northwestern Cambodia to focus on exploiting Cambodia's natural resources including timber and rubies. With 15% of total global tropical forests, Southeast Asia is a leader in timber production. This initiative quickly became an race between political factions, as the PRK adopted Khmer Rouge extraction efforts. From 1969 to 1995, Cambodia's forest cover shrank from 73% to 30–35%. Similarly, Vietnam lost nearly three million hectares of forest cover from 1976 to 1995. In 1992, Khmer Rouge became