~ Le Viêt Nam, aujourd'hui. ~
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Clinton to put personal seal on Vietnam ties

WASHINGTON - US President Bill Clinton will visit Vietnam in November, the first US president to do so since the Vietnam War ended 25 years ago, setting his personal seal on the normalization of ties between the two former foes. In what will be one of the final trips of his presidency, Clinton will tag the Vietnam visit onto an already announced trip to Southeast Asia for a summit of Asia Pacific leaders in mid-month, the White House said in a brief statement.

In Vietnam, the president "will address the range of issues we hope to advance with the people and the government of Vietnam following the normalization of our ties with that country," the statement said. Clinton has followed a course of cautious normalization of relations with Hanoi throughout his two-term presidency. He lifted a trade embargo in 1994 and followed through with the establishment of diplomatic relations in July 1995. He dispatched then secretary of state Warren Christopher to Hanoi for the opening of the US embassy there the following month.

Lengthy talks led five years later to the signing of a major bilateral trade agreement in a significant step pushed through by the Clinton administration. Earlier this year, Clinton sent William Cohen to Vietnam, the first US secretary of defense to visit since the end of the war. The US president has frequently expressed a desire in recent months to visit Vietnam before leaving office in January in an effort to improve ties even further between the former enemies. The politically sensitive visit comes 25 years after the end of the Vietnam War, a conflict that profoundly marked the United States, and only a few days after the November 7 presidential election. The last US troops pulled out of Vietnam in April 1975, after the United States suffered its first military defeat. Opposition to the war divided Americans at home and the nation appears to have only recently began to come to terms with the troubled period.

Clinton will travel on to Hanoi after attending a meeting of the Asia Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in Brunei. That meeting will host the leaders of 21 Pacific Rim countries November 15-16. Clinton met with his Vietnamese counterpart Tran Duc Luong at the UN Millennium summit in New York last week. A White House spokesman said they had discussed the possibility of a visit. Clinton's own political career has been dogged by allegations that he was among young US men who avoided the draft for the Vietnam War because of his political convictions. Clinton will be the third US president to visit the Southeast Asian nation. Democrat Lyndon Jonhson and Republican Richard Nixon preceded him in 1966 and 1969 respectively.

One outstanding issue from the Vietnam War that cost the lives of 58,000 Americans and some three million Vietnamese remains as a sore spot in bilateral ties. The fate of more then 1,500 US servicemen recorded as missing in action (MIA) remains uncertain and Cohen's trip earlier this year was in part intended to demonstrate the administration's determination to deal with the issue.

Agence France Presse - September 14, 2000.


Clinton Plans Vietnam Trip

WASHINGTON - President Clinton will visit Vietnam as one of his final foreign tours as president, but will make the politically sensitive trip only after the November elections. The White House announced Thursday that Clinton would tack the Vietnam trip to the end of a scheduled visit to Brunei. Clinton is to attend the annual Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum in Bandar Seri Begawan, Brunei, on Nov. 15 and 16 and then go to Vietnam.

``He will address the range of issues we hope to advance with the people and government of Vietnam following the normalization of our ties with their country,'' a White House statement said. Two of Clinton's predecessors visited Vietnam, according to the State Department. President Johnson visited U.S. troops at Cam Ranh Bay in October 1966 and December 1967. President Nixon met with South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu in Saigon in July 1969. Clinton discussed the possibility of a trip last week during a brief meeting with Vietnamese President Tran Duc Long. Both leaders were in New York to attend the U.N. Millennium Summit.

Clinton has long said he would like to visit Vietnam, site of the war that helped define his generation. Vietnam's political isolation and Clinton's personal baggage complicated and delayed that dream. The Vietnam War cost the lives of 58,000 Americans and approximately 3 million Vietnamese. Clinton was in college and graduate school during the war years and did not serve in Vietnam. Some of his critics still call him a draft-dodger. Clinton's choice of Al Gore, a Vietnam War veteran, as his running mate in 1992 was seen then as one attempt to overcome a potential political deficit.

Making the trip after the election would lessen the chance that controversy about Clinton's visit could hog news coverage when Gore, now the Democratic presidential candidate, might need it most. As president, Clinton has pursued a cautious rapprochement with Vietnam. He lifted the trade embargo against the communist government in 1994, and the next year restored diplomatic relations. Clinton reopened the U.S. Embassy in Hanoi in 1996 and in 1998 issued his first waiver of a law that bars trade relations with communist nations that deny citizens the right to emigrate.

Earlier this year, Clinton dispatched Defense Secretary William Cohen to Vietnam as the first U.S. secretary of defense to visit since the war ended in April 1975. Cohen's trip was intended to reinforce the Pentagon's commitment to finding, recovering and returning to their families the remains of 2,000 U.S. servicemen still unaccounted for from the war. It was also aimed at conveying the Clinton administration's interest in ties between American and Vietnamese armed forces.

By Anne Gearan -Associated Press - September 14, 2000.