Clinton tries burying past, honours war victims

Clinton tries burying past, honours war victims
AGENCE FRANCE PRESSE

TIEN CHAU, VIETNAM, NOV 18: President Bill Clinton attempted to lay to rest the ghosts of the Vietnam War today in a eulogy to peace beside a rice paddy where a US Pilot was shot down in 1967. Before flying to Saigon, scene of America's wartime humiliation, Clinton vowed the joint efforts by Vietnam and the US to recover the 1,992 US servicemen still missing in action (MIA) in Southeast Asia would not cease ``until we bring every possible hero home.''

On the historic first visit to Vietnam by a US head of State since the war, he told Dave and Dan Evert, sons of Air Force Captain Lawrence Evert, they would have ``a chance finally to take their father home'' and ``end of the anguish of not knowing.'' A repatriation ceremony of suspected remains of American dead was due to follow at Noi Bai airport outside Hanoi later in the day. The President thanked the American-Vietnamese excavation team at the site northwest of the capital ``who stand in the mud and work at the screens to try to find answers that are common to our humanity and go far beyond our differences.

``Whether we are American or Vietnamese, we all want to know where our loved ones are buried. This common endeavour we make as friends is unprecedented in all human history. Once we met here as adversaries, today we work as partners. By working together to recover those who were lost in a long-ago war, we reduce the chances that any of our children will know war,'' he said. In return for the ``kindness'' shown by the Vietnamese in helping trace MIAs, he said Washington was aiding the communist authorities find their 300,000 lost soldiers by releasing US military documents on the war.

Captain Evert was shot down as he attacked a railroad bridge on November 8, 1967, when his F-105 Thunderchief was hit by anti-aircraft fire. His last recorded words before his plane crashed in a paddy field near the small village of Huk Yen were: ``I'm hit hard.'' Because Evert went down so deep in enemy territory and did not appear to have ejected, a search and rescue was never attempted. ``No parachute was seen, the area was totally defended and there was no chance for a search,'' said Clinton.

Three million Vietnamese, one million of them civilians, and 58,000 US soldiers died in the Vietnam War, which ended with America's ignominious embassy-roof exodus from Saigon, now renamed Ho Chi Minh City and reborn as the country's economic capital. Washington has gone to extraordinary lengths to recover MIAs from conflicts from Vietnam to Korea and World War II, spending more than $ 100 million on the effort. In Vietnam, search teams have accounted for 591 American dead since 1988. Many families of MIAs, encouraged by Hollywood action films, believe their relatives are still alive in jungle prisons. Under such pressure, Clinton has made accounting for lost US soldiers the cornerstone of his policy of engaging Vietnam. His opposition to the war which threatened to tear America apart has made him a hero to young Vietnamese who make up the 60 per cent of the population born after the last US bomb fell on Hanoi.

The outpouring of crowd enthusiasm, scenes never seen before in the capital, has taken communist authorities, who imposed an information blackout on the Clintons' arrival, totally by surprise. Yesterday, Clinton called for a new era of reconciliation after the ``shared suffering'' of the Vietnam War in an unprecedented live address to the nation. But he took also the chance to raise human rights and religious tolerance and made an impassioned plea for freedom of information as an integral part of economic develoment. Clinton's foreign policy team believes they have got the balance right sensitivity and engagement of the former enemy on the three-day visit.