US won't compensate Vietnam's Agent Orange victims
HANOI - The United States won't compensate Vietnam's Agent Orange victims but will offer advice on dealing with the wartime defoliant, a US official said during a visit by Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld.
When Rumsfeld met Defence Minister Pham Van Tra and military officials, the Vietnamese side had raised the issue of dioxin exposure and contamination from Agent Orange, the senior official said on the sidelines of the visit.
"What we can do is make scientific information available, historical archival information we might have, ... technical advice on how to deal with the situation," the official said.
"We're ready to do more. We agreed to sit down at the expert level and see what we can do," he said.
US forces widely sprayed Agent Orange, which contained the lethal chemical dioxin, in southern Vietnam during the conflict to deprive enemy guerrillas of forest cover and destroy food crops.
Vietnam says millions of its people have suffered a range of illnesses and birth defects as a result of the use of the chemical.
A New York court last year rejected a Vietnamese lawsuit against US chemical giants Monsanto and Dow Chemical, who manufactured the herbicide during the war. The Vietnamese side has appealed.
In April, visiting US Secretary of Veterans Affairs James Nicholson was pressed by Vietnamese journalists on why the United States compensates its own veterans for health defects linked to the chemical, but not Vietnam's.
Agence France Presse - June 5, 2006.
Rumsfeld strengthens military ties with Vietnam
HANOI - The U.S. defense secretary, Donald Rumsfeld, and his Vietnamese counterpart agreed Monday to boost military exchanges between the former battlefield enemies, Pentagon officials said.
Vietnam is one of several Asian states that the Pentagon has built close ties with to conduct its war on terrorism and to hedge against a rising China, which Washington says is too secretive about its military spending and intentions.
"It was cordial and both sides agreed we want to expand these contacts," a senior Pentagon official said after Rumsfeld's hour-long meeting with Pham Van Tra, the Vietnamese defense minister.
The two sides agreed to share medical training under a Pentagon-funded programme and have "more visits at all levels," the official told reporters travelling with Rumsfeld on the second leg of a Southeast Asian visit.
U.S. military ties with Hanoi, 31 years after the end of the Vietnam war and 11 years after the normalisation of diplomatic ties, have warmed gradually with ship visits.
Rumsfeld, the second Pentagon chief to visit communist-run Vietnam since the fall of U.S. ally South Vietnam in 1975, was due to meet Prime Minister Phan Van Khai later on Monday.
Rumsfeld, who also headed the Defense Department in the aftermath of the Vietnam War, last visited Hanoi in 1995 as a businessman.
"I hasten to congratulate you and the people of Vietnam for the amazing economic achievements that have occurred just in the last 11 years," Rumsfeld told Tra.
The military talks were held less than a week after the two countries signed a new trade pact that paves the way for Vietnam to join the World Trade Organisation by year-end.
A U.S. Navy ship would visit Vietnam this summer, the fourth in four years, Rumsfeld said.
But he told reporters in Singapore on Sunday that "we have no plans for access to military facilities in Vietnam" and his aides stressed that ties would evolve gradually. For Hanoi, this means avoiding provoking giant neighbour China.
U.S. officials have said Vietnam, which fought a brief war with China in 1979, shares Washington's desire to have good ties with Beijing and a wariness about rapid Chinese military growth.
Exchanges under the Pentagon's International Military Education and Training (IMET) programme would begin with English-language training for Vietnamese officers in San Antonio, Texas, the official said.
Further IMET exchanges "will need some time to cook and there are some restraints on our side", said the official, referring to congressional oversight that raises concerns about U.S. military partners' human rights behavior.
Rumsfeld and Tra discussed cooperation on recovering the remains of the 1,805 U.S. soldiers missing in action in Southeast Asia since the war, which killed more than 58,000 Americans and three million Vietnamese soldiers and civilians.
The Pentagon official said Washington could offer technical help for Hanoi in recovering the remains of its 300,000 missing soldiers. He added that although Vietnam was very helpful, Washington wanted more assistance searching Vietnamese archives and finding data on missing soldiers in Laos and Cambodia.
Hanoi will host U.S. President George W. Bush in November at the annual summit of the Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum.
Reuters - June 5, 2006.
Vietnam to help recover U.S. MIAs remains
HANOI - Vietnamese military leaders, in a meeting with Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld, said Monday they would try to do more to help the U.S. recover the remains of Americans missing in action in the Vietnam War.
According to a senior defense official in the meetings, the United States is asking for greater access to Vietnamese archives as well as information about MIAs lost in Laos and Cambodia. The official spoke on condition of anonymity because the meeting was private.
The official said Rumsfeld raised the issue and said that MIA recovery is a national priority of the U.S. and "he said that we appreciated what they have done but we have some things we'd like them to do more of."
Currently there are 1,805 American troops unaccounted for from the war, including 1,376 in Vietnam, according to Marine Maj. Jay Rutter, deputy commander of the Joint POW/MIA Accounting Command, which heads the recovery efforts here.
During the early moments of Rumsfeld's meeting with the military leaders, the U.S. secretary said Hanoi has changed a lot since he was last here in 1995 as a private citizen.
"I hasten to congratulate you and the people of Vietnam for the amazing economic achievements in the last 11 years," Rumsfeld told Vietnamese defense minister Gen. Pham Van Tra. Rumsfeld said he took a walk around Hanoi and could "feel the energy, the vibrancy of the city ...There's a significant change in just that short period of time."
Rumsfeld also toured the historic Temple of Literature, a 1,000 year-old-facility that was initially a Buddhist temple and later served as a university, and visited the military's POW/MIA office.
On Sunday, Rumsfeld said the United States wants to expand its military relationship with Vietnam, but has no plans to seek access to military facilities in this former enemy nation.
Rumsfeld talked only generally about his goals for the U.S. military relationship with a country that has come to symbolize one of the military's most divisive and politically explosive wars.
"I don't have a wish list and I don't have a set of things we're trying to achieve," he said en route to Hanoi. "What we want to see is a relationship between our country and Vietnam evolve in a way that is comfortable to them and comfortable to us. And it has been doing that over recent years and I suspect it will continue on that path."
Critics of the current
Iraq war and Rumsfeld's leadership have compared it to the Vietnam conflict, noting that in both public support eroded as time went on with little to show for the loss of American lives.
The trip to Vietnam is Rumsfeld's first as defense secretary, and it comes more than 30 years after the end of the Vietnam war. He previously visited the country twice in the late 1960s as a member of Congress, then returned as a private citizen about a decade ago.
The Associated Press - June 5, 2006.
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