Clinton Likely To Visit Vietnam In 2000
HANOI - President Clinton is likely to visit former
enemy Vietnam next year, a senior U.S. official said Friday.
U.S. ambassador to Hanoi Pete Peterson said Clinton might
make the trip -- and be the first U.S. president to set foot on
Vietnamese soil in decades -- during the middle or end of 2000.
Vietnam Prime Minister Phan Van Khai had formally invited
Clinton to visit at last month's summit of the Asia Pacific
Economic Cooperation (APEC) forum in New Zealand, he
said.
``Prime Minister Khai did invite the president... and the
president has announced he wants to visit. He has expressed an
interest to visit from the first day I came here,'' Peterson told
Reuters in an interview.
Washington and Hanoi normalized diplomatic ties in 1995, two
decades after the end of the Vietnam War, which pitted the
communist North against the U.S.-backed South Vietnam.
Peterson, a former navy pilot who spent more than six years
locked up in the infamous ``Hanoi Hilton'' prison after his plane
was shot down during the war, took up his post in mid-1997.
In recent years Washington and Hanoi have also edged closer
to normalizing trade ties, although formal signing of a landmark
bilateral trade pact has been delayed amid internal debate within
Vietnam's leadership over the accord.
Peterson said it would be good to have the trade agreement in
place before Clinton's trip, but this would not influence his
decision to visit.
Reuters - October 15, 1999.
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