Clinton wraps up historic visit with ecstatic welcome in Ho Chi Minh City HO CHI MINH CITY - President Bill Clinton was wrapping up his landmark reconciliation visit to communist Vietnam in Ho Chi Minh City Sunday, receiving an ecstatic welcome from tens of thousands at the scene of America's humiliating retreat from the war. Massed crowds of waving and cheering Vietnamese brought the former Saigon to a standstill early Sunday as they welcomed the first American head of state to return since the US-backed Southern capital was taken by North Vietnamese troops in 1975. Surging throngs were packed outside the old presidential palace where communist tanks crashed through the gates during the fall of Saigon. Residents, many dressed in nightclothes, formed an almost unbroken line from the city centre along the five-kilometre (three-mile) road to the airport. Police blocked off the route and streets around Clinton's hotel, causing gridlock. "I was here 25 years ago when the Americans left and I am very honoured today to see President Clinton," said Trinh Quang Dai, 44. US Trade Representative Charlene Barshefsky, leading talks on a bilateral trade deal signed in July, told an audience of students: "This is a very emotional visit. "The reaction of the Vietnamese people on the streets to President Clinton is heart-warming and something all of us will always remember, most particularly the president. "Of all the trips we have taken over the last eight years, this is the one that will always stand out." The rapturous welcome accorded Clinton and his wife Hillary on their last scheduled foreign trip appears to have taken Vietnam's communist regime by complete surprise and there were signs of irritation Sunday. Clinton has been free to take walkabouts in Hanoi, make a number of public speeches -- including a live address to the nation -- and visit excavations for the remains of Americans still listed as missing in action (MIA). But the state press has maintained a stony silence on the crowds and made no mention of his attempts to raise the issues of human rights, religious tolerance or freedom of information. On Sunday Vietnam's conservative communist leader, in a tone contrasting with Clinton's pleas to heal the past and reformers in his own government, hailed the guerrilla resistance against the United States in the Vietnam War as the cradle of determined socialism. Communist party secretary general Le Kha Phieu demanded the US respect Vietnam's monolithic political system and banged the drum of the North's victory over the American-backed South. "The resistance wars brought the Vietnamese people national independence and reunification to advance the country toward socialism so for the Vietnamese people the war was not ultimately a story of darkness, sadness and unhappiness," the official Vietnam News Agency (VNA) quoted Phieu as saying when he met Clinton on Saturday. "The future of the Vietnamese nation is independence and socialism ... socialism (will) not only exist but further develop." He also stressed the "primary role" of the state sector in business, taking a different line from Trade Minister Bu Khoan's statement Saturday that the economy had to open up to develop. White House officials gave no immediate reaction, but said Clinton had made his views "very clear" during the two leaders' talks. The loss of Saigon brought an end to the Vietnam War and saw the United States' undignified exit from Vietnam by helicopter from the US embassy roof. Tens of thousands of Vietnamese fled the city as boat people after America's exodus. Many Southerners accused Washington, and in thousands of cases their American soldier fathers, of abandoning them as they faced re-education at home or internment in camps across Southeast Asia. Twenty five years on, the city renamed after the leader of America's guerrilla enemy is once again Vietnam's commercial capital and a key destination in Clinton's effort to seal rapprochement. On Sunday, at the risk of inflaming his hosts, Clinton was to meet the city's Roman Catholic Archbishop Pham Minh Man as well as addressing American and Vietnamese business leaders. He was due to leave for Washington on Sunday night. After lifting an embargo in 1994, Washington and Hanoi signed a trade agreement in July, opening American markets to Vietnam in return for market-led reforms. While focusing on business to engage Washington's former foe, Clinton has also taken pains to lay to rest the ghosts of the past. On Saturday he vowed to bring home "every fallen hero" at an excavation site northwest of Hanoi where a US pilot was shot down in 1967 and oversaw a repatriation ceremony for the suspected remains of American war dead. Agence France Presse - November 19, 2000.

Clinton Concludes Vietnam Visit HO CHI MINH CITY - Concluding a historic visit, President Clinton urged this communist nation Sunday to allow greater individual freedoms and said he hoped more Americans would become ``involved with the Vietnam of the future and not the Vietnam of the past.'' Clinton plunged into crowds in a narrow shopping street, shaking hands and stopping at open-front markets to buy last-minute gifts. To a generation of American GIs, this bustling city of 5 million people was known as Saigon before its surrender to communist forces in America's most humiliating military defeat. On a sweltering day, the president sat in a courtyard of the city's fine arts museum to discuss Vietnam's future with young people in business, academia, the arts and the media. He extolled the virtues of freedom and opportunity and the challenges of the global economy. ``One of the great debates every society must have is how to balance individual freedom with the need for ... cohesion of families, communities and nation,'' the president said. Despite Clinton's pleas, Vietnam's powerful Communist Party chief said his country would go its own way. ``We respect other nations' choices of lifestyle and political systems,'' Le Kha Phieu was quoted as telling Clinton. ``We also demand other nations respect our country's political system and choices.'' Clinton, after two days in Hanoi, arrived near midnight Saturday. Despite the hour, thousands lined the route for his 15-minute drive from the airport, many waving, some cheering, as his motorcade swept by. On the final day of his groundbreaking Vietnam visit, Clinton also was to meet John Baptist Pham Minh Man, archbishop of Ho Chi Minh City, thereby demonstrating support for the right to religious worship, White House officials said. Ahead of Clinton's appearances, police broke up a sit-in by more than 150 peasants who had camped out beneath protest banners for several months near a government office. The communist government's decision to allow the protest over land to go on for so long suggested a gradual loosening of official controls. But the peaceful overnight dispersal revealed the limits of what the regime will tolerate, as well as its sensitivity to international scrutiny during the U.S. president's visit. Leaving Hanoi, Clinton stood at attention on a floodlit tarmac as a U.S. military honor guard took possession of the remains of three missing Americans and sent them to Hawaii for identification. Much of Saturday was devoted to American MIAs and Vietnamese children maimed from leftover mines and bombs in the Vietnam War, subjects that weighed heavily on Clinton's emotions. The president visited a rice paddy outside Hanoi where recovery workers were digging through mud for any remains of Air Force fighter pilot Lawrence G. Evert, whose jet crashed on a bombing run in 1967. Evert's sons, David and Daniel from Chandler, Ariz., accompanied the president. ``When we were younger, about 6 and 8, we used to talk about how we would come over to Vietnam and come get him out of jail — we thought he was alive so we thought we'd come get him and take him home and rescue him,'' said David, now 39. ``And we kind of feel like that's what we're doing right now.'' Tears welled in Clinton's eyes as he stood on a bamboo-supported platform beside the excavation pit. ``Whether we are American or Vietnamese,'' Clinton said, ``I think we all want to know where our loved ones are buried.'' Clinton is the first president in 31 years to visit Vietnam and the first ever to stop in Hanoi. In a farewell meeting with President Tran Duc Luong in Hanoi, he joked about the U.S. election stalemate: ``I have to go home to see if there's a president.'' Luong called Clinton's visit ``a new page'' in relations. ``It's a shame this is so short,'' Luong said. ``I hope the next U.S. president will continue what we have started.'' U.S. Ambassador Pete Peterson said the visit had improved understanding and trust between the two nations. After losing 58,000 Americans in Vietnam, the United States withdrew its combat forces in 1973. Two years later, on April 30, 1975, a rear guard of 11 Marines scrambled aboard a helicopter at the U.S. Embassy in a blaze of tear gas and smoke grenades. They fled Saigon as communist forces surged into the city and the U.S.-backed government announced an unconditional surrender. Saigon was renamed Ho Chi Minh City in honor of the revolutionary leader who declared Vietnam's independence from French rule in 1945 and led the struggle against the United States. In a striking gesture of reconciliation, Clinton went to the Communist Party headquarters in Hanoi and chatted amiably with party secretary Phieu. Vietnam began opening its economy in the mid-1980s. The effort waned during the Asian financial crisis, but then Vietnam signed a bilateral trade agreement with the United States in July that will force major reforms. ``We have a private economic sector, but we do not privatize the entire economy. We are reorganizing cooperatives, not dismantling them,'' Phieu said in remarks quoted by the Communist Party newspaper Nhan Dan. The president also attended a ceremony intended to raise consciousness about unexploded mines and bombs that still wound or kill 2,000 Vietnamese a year. Clinton called land mines ``the curse of innocent children all over the world.'' He said there are about 300,000 tons of unexploded ordnance and about 3.5 million land mines buried in Vietnam. ``You will have America's support until you have found every land mine and every piece of unexploded ordnance,'' the president said. ``This is the tragedy of war for which peace produces no answer.'' He met four children maimed by unexploded ordnance. Hoan Quang Sy, 11, extended both arms to Clinton in a traditional Asian greeting, but his left hand was gone, the result of an old bomb. Neither country has signed a 1977 treaty outlawing land mines, which the United States stockpiles and Vietnam produces. The United States says mines are needed in the Korean Peninsula until an effective alternative is found. At the Hanoi airport, the U.S. honor guard carried in turn three small wooden boxes of remains, each placed in an aluminum casket and covered by the American flag as the guard saluted and Clinton stood at attention beside Peterson. The remains were placed on a C-117 for transport to Hawaii. In all, 21 sets of remains from two wars — the three sets from Vietnam, three from neighboring Laos and 15 from North Korea — are being taken to Army forensics experts in Hawaii for identification, arriving Monday. Associated Press - November 19, 2000.

Vietnam press silent on Clinton's human rights plea HANOI - Vietnam's state press made no mention on Saturday of US President Bill Clinton's impassioned plea for greater freedom of information in the communist state. Despite an unprecedented live broadcast to the nation of Clinton's keynote speech on his historic reconciliation visit, newspapers also cut all his remarks on human rights from their reports. In his address at the national university in Hanoi on Friday, the president said: "In our experience, guaranteeing the right to religious worship and the right to political dissent does not threaten the stability of a society. "Instead it builds people's confidence in the fairness of our institutions." And while Clinton stressed the United States did not seek to impose its ideas, he singled out freedom of expression as essential to economic development. "Economies all over the world grow faster ... when young people like you have every opportunity to explore new ideas and then to turn those ideas into your own business opportunities," he told his student audience. "We have seen that economies work better where newspapers are free to expose corruption, and independent courts can ensure that contracts are honoured, that competition is robust and fair and that public officials honour the rule of law. "As important as knowledge is, the benefits of knowledge are necessarily limited by undue restrictions on its use." Vietnam has sweeping secrecy legislation which the authorities use to reinforce the tight press controls in force here. All five Internet service providers are state-run and operate firewalls to block access to Websites they find objectionable. The president's plea turned upside down the delicate tightrope the communist authorities have sought to walk between keeping a tight grip on news, information and dissent, and opening up to the world economy. The Nhan Dan (The People), the communist party mouthpiece, limited itself to a remark on Saturday that the speech was broadcast live by Vietnamese television. The Quan Doi Nhan Dan, the army daily, made no mention of the address, while the English-language Vietnam News confined itself to dealing with a section on the country's soldiers still missing in action in Vietnam War. The state press, however, made much of a toast by Clinton at a state banquet Friday night in which he looked forward to a "new history" between the former enemies. "The most important thing for us is mutual respect and non-interference on each other's internal affairs," said President Tran Duc Luong in reply. The communist regime regularly denounces as "American imperialism" and interference US accusations over Vietnam's human rights record. The Vietnam News also reported remarks by Luong expressing gratitude to "widespread movements by people of America and the world" which called for an end to the Vietnam War and later demanded the lifting of sanctions and normalised ties. Clinton's own opposition to the war as a younger man makes him a hero to young Vietnamese. Agence France Presse - November 19, 2000.