Clinton heads to Vietnam to seal historic rapprochement

But Vietnam’s cautious communist authorities have done their utmost to play the visit down, even denying the US President the front-page photographs in official newspapers normally accorded to visiting heads of state. And when First Lady Hillary Clinton led the presidential cavalcade into the Communist Capital in the early afternoon, a solitary Stars and Stripes was visible at the airport alongside nine red and yellow star flags of Communist Vietnam. A single banner draped over the runway side of the main arrivals terminal “warmly welcomes H.E. Mr. William Jefferson Clinton, President of the United States of America and spouse on an official visit to the Socialist Republic of Vietnam.” Clinton was due to arrive late in the evening.

A full quarter of a century after the conflict ended, most of Vietnam’s young population now has no memory of the war. But even in a country that has no democracy, the millions who were maimed or bereaved are still a constituency whose views the government is forced to take into account. Vietnamese officials well understand the domestic constraints which make any explicit talk of reparations politically unthinkable for Washington. But in recent weeks they have stepped up their pressure for a voluntary gesture from Clinton to provide some recompense to the legions of war orphans and amputees.

“Due to the extremely serious consequences of war in Vietnam, the country has a very great demand for humanitarian assistance and needs a more positive and more urgent response from the United States,” Foreign Minister Nguyen Dy Nien said in an official interview last week. As he reaches the end of his two-term presidency, Clinton is perhaps uniquely equipped to pull off the delicate balancing act between Vietnamese expectations and domestic political constraints. He has eight years of experience in hotspots around the world and faces no re-election. But his lame duck status now that Americans have already voted to replace him but with the colour of the next administration still unknown, also leaves him with few weapons up his sleeve.

“It is a little bit difficult for him because he doesn’t have the authority to commit new funds,” said US Agency for International Development assistant administrator for Asia and the Near East Robert Randolph. “We have stripped out the closets to beef up our programmes here,” he said. But Randolph acknowledged that new aid would probably still fall far short of Vietnamese expectations — with $ 7.5 million from a five-year regional AIDS package expected to form the largest part. Clinton will be forced to fall back on his personal charm to woo the Vietnamese. Embassy officials said the President was determined to hold a number of impromptu events during his visit, including walkabouts on the streets. Rumours also abounded that the President had packed his trusty saxophone. To many young Vietnamese, Clinton is something of a hero because of his well-publicised opposition to the Vietnam War. But the same allegations of draft-doging have dogged him at home and Clinton will be at pains to pay his respect toAmerica’s war dead. No less than two visits are planned to the Joint Task Force charged with fuly accounting for US servicemen still posted as missing in action. For right-wing critics of Clinton’s policy of engagement with Asian Communist states, the continuing search for MIAs has become something of a totem after a string of Hollywood blockbusters in the 1980s gave currency to the idea that some remained alive in jungle prison camps.

But the visits will also serve to highlight the contrast between the tens of millions of US tax dollars Washington has spent on the search for its missing and the eight million dollars spent by USAID here this year, further antagonising the tens of thousands here who expect US compensation. Domestic constraints will force Clinton to be seen to raise the issues of human rights and religious freedoms in a capital which still boasts of a city centre statue of Lenin. An address to the Vietnamese nation to be televised live by state television on Friday will give him the perfect opportunity. But anything too robust risks being rebuffed by the Communist authorities as a fresh example of American imperialism.