Clinton Cheered During Vietnam Visit

ByABC News
November 17, 2000, 6:30 AM

H A N O I, Vietnam, Nov. 17 -- Twenty-five years after the end of a war that claimed 58,000 U.S. and an estimated 3 million Vietnamese lives, President Clinton told the Vietnamese people ontoday that the United States joins with them in honoring thesacrifices of war so that a painful past can be redeemed in apeaceful and prosperous future.

To a communist nation still suspicious of the West, Clintonpleaded for a more open Vietnamese society and economy.

He said the new generation deserves the chance to live in yourtomorrows, not our yesterdays.

We cannot change the past, said the first American presidentto come to Vietnam since the war ended in U.S. surrender of theSouth 25 years ago. What we can change is the future.

In an unprecedented act, the authorities broadcast his speechlive. His immediate audience was mostly students at VietnamNational University, listening to a translation through earphones.Passers-by along Hanois Hai Ba Trung street, a stretch of TV andstereo shops, stopped to watch at least a few at every shop, overa dozen at some.

Clinton: Tourist, Diplomat, PoliticianClinton was first the diplomat, then the tourist, then thecampaigner, grasping hands in the sidewalk crowd along Van MieuStreet after walking the walled grounds of the Temple ofLiterature, a 1,000-year-old museum, once a university dedicated toliterature and philosophy. But his high point came in talking at the university, cautiouslytrying an occasional phrase in Vietnamese. His wife and daughtersat in the audience.

In urging a more open Vietnamese trading economy and society,Clinton acknowledged that no one can force change on a nationdetermined to make its own decisions a nation which fought offthe United States when it tried to block communism here.

Speaking of the long war he opposed and avoided by maneuveringaround the draft three decades ago, Clinton said the sufferingshared by Americans and Vietnamese alike in the war has given ourcountries a relationship unlike any others.