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Bush to meet with Vietnamese prime minister
Once bitter enemies, the United States and Vietnam now stand as economic and political partners in a relationship barely imagined a generation ago. Prime Minister Phan Van Khai of Vietnam has embarked on a U.S. itinerary — the purchase of four 787 airliners from Boeing Co., a meeting with Microsoft's Bill Gates and a chance to ring in a session of the New York Stock Exchange. On Tuesday, Khai will meet with US President Bush at the White House to mark the 10th anniversary of the normalization of diplomatic ties and to press Washington on Vietnam's bid for membership in the World Trade Organization.
"It proves that if you live long enough, anything is possible," said Sen. John McCain, a Navy pilot whose body still bears the scars of nearly six years in Vietnamese prisons after his plane was shot down during the Vietnam War. In July 1995, when US President Clinton took the bold step of restoring relations, there was fierce criticism in the Republican-controlled Congress, among veterans groups and families of servicemen still missing in Indochina. The president who had been dogged by his avoidance of military service and his opposition to the war needed political cover from decorated veterans such as McCain. It was McCain who praised Clinton's action and said, "We have looked back in anger at Vietnam for too long." Khai's visit has produced none of the fury of a decade ago, in part because of Vietnam's cooperation in the search for U.S. servicemembers, its steps toward reform and its fertile territory for business — private U.S. companies invested $66 million last year and two-way trade that year totaled $6.4 billion. Khai toured Microsoft's Washington state offices on Monday, and then joined Gates in announcing two agreements to improve information technology in Vietnam, including plans to offer computer and software training to more than 50,000 teachers. The evolution of the U.S.-Vietnam relationship can be divided into two periods, one associated with the establishment of diplomatic ties in 1995 and the other the economic steps after the Bilateral Trade Agreement in December 2001. "Vietnam has carried out far-reaching and successful economic reforms that have been recognized and supported by the international community, including the United States," said Jonathan R. Stromseth, the Asia Foundation's Vietnam representative in Hanoi. Among Vietnam's political reforms, "its National Assembly is becoming a stronger and more independent institution, where parliamentarians can grill ministers under the full glare of live television," Stromseth said. While the anger over the war has subsided 30 years after the fall of Saigon, the 2004 presidential campaign proved "how close to the surface the wounds of the Vietnam War are," McCain said. Questions about President Bush's National Guard service during the Vietnam conflict and challenges to Sen. John Kerry's decorated combat record were major issues in the contest for the White House. "I spent several weeks of the campaign arguing over a war 30 years ago and nobody can change the outcome," McCain said in an interview. After the war, families faulted Vietnam on the search for missing U.S. servicemen. A total of 2,583 Americans were unaccounted for in Indochina at the war's end, including 1,921 in Vietnam. As of April, 523 Americans have been accounted for in Vietnam, according to the State Department. Larry Greer, a spokesman for the Defense Department's POW-MIA office, said that every other month, the United States dispatches teams of as many as 100 people to search for remains in Vietnam. They have had access to crash sites, villages and former military officials. For the first time in several years, U.S. officials will be able to travel to an area in the Central Highlands that had been closed to investigators. "The Vietnamese have been doing this with us," Greer said. For several generations, Vietnam is a chapter in a history textbook or the subject of college courses. A number of veterans have returned to the country — as tourists — including McCain, who took his wife and family and stopped in Hanoi, Da Nang and China Beach. The Vietnamese prime minister will meet with McCain on Wednesday. "If somebody had walked up to Lyndon Johnson and said in 40 years, this is what it will look like, he would have said we won the war," Buzzanco said.
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