~ Le Viêt Nam, aujourd'hui. ~
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Clinton's Vietnam Visit Called 'Home Run'

HO CHI MINH CITY - While his own constituents were caught up in a frenetic domestic drama over his successor, Bill Clinton returned Monday almost unnoticed from scoring one of the most important--and unexpected--successes of his presidency halfway around the world, in Vietnam. Vietnam's government provided limited advance notice of his visit and terse coverage by state-controlled media after he arrived, yet Clinton received the kind of public adulation from tens of thousands normally associated with pop idols. On signs and in shouts for his attention, the Vietnamese clamored in ever growing numbers to get close to a man they called simply "Bill." The president and his senior aides were openly taken aback by the public reaction, with Clinton describing various aspects of his visit as "overwhelming," "profoundly moving" and "astonishing." In the process, the president set an important precedent for his successor in 21st century diplomacy: Constructive engagement with long-standing enemies works.

"Sanctions and trade and investment embargoes--all of those things have not delivered much in places like Cuba, Iran and Iraq. But as we saw in Vietnam, engagement has delivered. And it certainly costs less to American taxpayers than an embargo," said Moises Naim, editor of Foreign Policy magazine. Over the past eight years--and despite the controversy over the president's position on the Vietnam War three decades earlier--the Clinton administration gradually but deliberately lifted the trade embargo in 1994, opened diplomatic relations in 1995 and negotiated a U.S.-Vietnamese trade agreement in 1999. The thaw led Vietnam to approach Clinton exactly a year ago about becoming the first American president to visit Vietnam in the postwar era.

North Korea Could Be Next

"It would have been easy for him to say, 'Vietnam is just one of those issues I don't want to deal with.' But instead, he picked up the bat and swung--and hit a home run right out of the park," said Thomas Vallely, a Vietnam veteran and former Massachusetts legislator who now heads a Harvard University development project in Vietnam. The administration may be on the verge of reaping similar rewards in North Korea, arguably the most feared of what until recently the U.S. called "rogue states." Again, it has been a phased effort beginning with an agreement to dismantle a nuclear energy program in 1994 that might have been used to produce nuclear weapons.

Last month, Secretary of State Madeleine Albright became the first ranking U.S. official to visit Pyongyang, the North Korean capital, to discuss terms that would limit the North's ballistic missile program. Clinton is now considering a trip before he leaves office to negotiate a formal agreement. "Even after such a short time and such limited engagement, there's been a diffusion of the threat. We're now less jittery about the dangers North Korea presents," said Naim, the editor. Engagement is especially effective with a twist: going around the government directly to the people. "Clinton had such an impact because, in the new age of global communications, it's easier to constructively engage society rather than its leadership," said Thomas Carothers, vice president for studies at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace in Washington. "And that has implications for how a president uses the new global pulpit in the future, not only in Vietnam. It shows that there's great value when a president stands firmly for certain values and speaks out purposefully but is available for dialogue." The second effect of Clinton's visit appears to be an intensified debate inside Vietnam about the pace and direction of change. The president left in his wake a Communist leadership scrambling to counter both his message and popularity. Just hours after the president departed, an official paper published a front-page article Monday by Lt. Gen. Le Van Dung, chief of staff of the Vietnam People's Army, pledging to "crush" the threat posed by "peaceful evolution," code words for pro-democracy political reforms.

"Nowadays, hostile forces are fighting against us actively to sabotage socialism and the leading role of the Communist Party of Vietnam," he wrote in the Vietnamese-language People's Army. He also warned that the military has a special duty "to give constant direction to the entire army and the entire people to struggle to make sure the peaceful evolution plots of the hostile forces fail."

Blunt Talk From Communist Officials

As the public turnout to see Clinton mushroomed almost by the hour, the leadership also took what U.S. officials considered the unusual and undiplomatic step of publishing a blunt admonition to the American president by Le Kha Phieu, secretary-general of the Communist Party, delivered in a private meeting Saturday. "We respect the choice, the lifestyle and political systems of other nations. We in turn demand that other nations respect our people's choices," Phieu told Clinton, according to the party's official newspaper. Phieu is the hardest-line Communist in Vietnam's troika of leaders, which also includes the president and prime minister.

Phieu also challenged Clinton's allusion to the war era as the "painful past." Phieu reportedly countered: "For us, the past was the root, the foundation, the strength of the present and future. The result of our anti-aggression resistance was that we gained independence, reunified our country and brought our country to socialism. Therefore, for us, the past was not a dark, sorrowful and unhappy past." Senior members of Clinton's entourage conceded that the United States and Vietnam still have serious differences over both politics and economics. Yet they say they are convinced that Hanoi can't back away from the relationship--nor avoid the consequences of inviting American business and aid organizations to visit and of globalization.

"Only the United States can help Vietnam evolve from a developing country over the next 15 years," said a ranking administration official in the entourage. "Not France, not Japan, not China--only the United States." The only issues are how this Southeast Asian nation makes the required compromises and when, he said.

'He Got All Parties to Sit Down'

The final effect of the president's historic three-day visit was on his legacy. It was more than a feel-good trip for the first president to visit Vietnam since 1969, when Richard Nixon stopped for six hours to rally troops at the height of the war. It may also have closed the chapter over his own initial attempt to avoid the draft. "Clinton has always had Vietnam somewhere in his psyche," said Vallely, the Vietnam vet and development project chief. "Despite his past, he never gave up the idea that at the end of his term he was going to do something big with Vietnam. He did it: He got all parties to sit down, and he made Vietnam more comfortable with dealing with the United States. In the end, that will probably shape his legacy even more than his position on the war."

By Robin Wright - The Los Angeles Times - November 21, 2000.


Vow, Vetting of Speech Got Clinton Air Time

HO CHI MINH CITY - Through months of negotiations that led to President Clinton's state visit, U.S. Ambassador Douglas "Pete" Peterson kept assuring Communist authorities that if they agreed to carry Clinton's speech to university students on a live national TV broadcast, "there will be no surprises." But the authorities were nervous. They expected Clinton to be confrontational on the issues of human rights and religious freedom. And if the speech were carried live--a concession never before granted any visiting head of state--the Communist Party would lose, however briefly, the one tool it clings to most fiercely: control of information.

In the end, sources from both countries said, the concession was made on one condition: The United States would deliver the speech for examination by Vietnamese officials three hours before its planned delivery. If there were "surprises," or if the tone was controversial, authorities would pull the plug on the live broadcast for "technical" reasons. The broadcast went ahead as scheduled. For the speech, and for other, nontelevised ones during Clinton's three-day visit that ended Sunday, the president was given high marks by foreign diplomats for straddling a fine line: He forcefully conveyed his message on the need for human rights, religious freedom and open political and economic systems, but he refrained from lecturing. He dwelt not on communism's shortcomings but on the strengths of democracy and the Vietnamese culture.

"Let me say emphatically," he told 400 students at Vietnam National University in Hanoi, "we do not seek to impose these ideals, nor could we. Vietnam is an ancient and enduring country. Only you can decide how to weave individual liberties and human rights into the rich and strong fabric of Vietnamese national identity." An estimated 20 million Vietnamese, or one of every four residents, watched Clinton's speech, according to a quasi-governmental poll. His remarks appeared to be well received, particularly when he spoke of the two countries' "intertwined" history, which dates back 200 years, to when President Thomas Jefferson tried to import Vietnamese rice seeds to plant on his Virginia farm. Still, a Vietnamese official admitted, "the leadership was not relaxed."

According to Vietnamese officials familiar with Clinton's trip, the ruling Politburo was uneasy with the notion that the visit could be a catalyst for political change. Its members did not want a free exchange of ideas that might get people wondering if communism really was the best route for national development and individual fulfillment. The university students at Clinton's speech were instructed to be respectful but unemotional and to clap only at the beginning and end, some students said later. The U.S. delegation asked that a 30-minute question-and-answer session be allowed after the speech and that an additional 1,000 students be permitted to assemble in the university courtyard to hear the speech over loudspeakers. Both requests were denied, and the courtyard was empty.

The Communist Party was so unsettled by the idea that its views might be overshadowed by Clinton's words that Monday's edition of the Viet Nam News, an English-language daily, reported what party chief Le Kha Phieu had told Clinton during their weekend meeting but nothing of what Clinton had said in Vietnam. Throughout the trip, the Vietnamese media made no mention of the enthusiastic crowds that greeted Clinton at each stop. With 300 foreign journalists in Vietnam to cover the visit, the country had a golden opportunity to showcase its progress and extol the virtues of its system. But Hanoi never issued a press release, other than giving Clinton's schedule, or held a briefing. The only briefing it did schedule, by the Foreign Ministry, was canceled at the last minute because, as one official explained: "No one was willing to give it. Everyone was scared. There was risk in saying the wrong thing and no reward in saying the right thing." Meanwhile, Washington brought in 30 government public information specialists and bombarded the White House press corps with briefings, some given by officials who knew a great deal about the U.S. perspective on politics and economics but little about Vietnam. The result was coverage that often reflected the U.S. spin, focusing more on Vietnam's failures than its accomplishments.

But clearly both sides--and Vietnam frequently used the words "our side" and "your side" during negotiations--had reason to consider Clinton's visit a major success. As one Vietnamese official put it: "We are closer today than we were yesterday. Bill Clinton played by the rules. He showed an understanding of our culture and respected our dignity. That has not always been the case with American presidents."

By David Lamb - The Los Angeles Times - November 21, 2000.