Clinton's Focus Shifts To MIAs

Nations Sign Trade, AIDS And Worker Safety Agreements

(CBS)  On the second day of his historic visit to Vietnam, President Clinton Saturday turns his attention to the unfinished business of the Vietnam War.

Mr. Clinton starts the day with a visit to a site where a joint U.S.-Vietnamese team is working to find remains of one of the 1,498 American servicemen still unaccounted for in Vietnam, 27 years after the United States pulled out of the war.

He will later highlight the problem of unexploded bombs and land mines in the country, and close his last day in Hanoi by attending a repatriation ceremony for recovered remains being returned to the United States.

Accounting for the missing servicemen has been a top priority of U.S. veterans' groups and politically essential to Mr. Clinton's efforts to normalize U.S. relations with Vietnam. Mr. Clinton is the first sitting U.S. president to visit Vietnam since the war.

He will visit Thien Chau village, 17 miles northwest of Hanoi, where a team of the U.S.-Vietnamese "Joint Task Force-Full Accounting" is searching for the remains of Air Force Captain Lawrence Evert.

Evert, who was posthumously promoted to lieutenant colonel, crashed in his F-105D jet near the village after being hit by enemy fire. "I'm hit hard," was his last radio transmission.

With the site deep in North Vietnamese territory and heavily defended, a search and rescue mission was impossible at the time, officials said.

The task force team, which includes an anthropologist and several military specialists, is sifting through the dense mud of the suspected crash site on the edge of a rice paddy. Evert's two sons, David and Dan, will be with Mr. Clinton as he observes the team at work.

Mr. Clinton will also address the workers.

"No two nations have ever before done the things we are doing together to find the missing from the Vietnam conflict," Mr. Clinton said in a speech Friday to students at Vietnam National University in Hanoi.

Friday's speech focused on his vision for new relations based on expanded trade and cooperation in areas such as science and disease control. But Mr. Clinton said the door had been opened by Vietnam's help in accounting for American soldiers missing in action.

Reuters
A Vietnamese man stops to
watch President Mr. Clinton's
speech, which had a
translation that was at
times far afield from Mr.
Mr. Clinton's actual words.

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In an unprecedented act, the authorities broadcast his speech live as students listened to a translation through earphones.

Passers-by along Hanoi's Hai Ba Trung street, a stretch of TV and stereo shops, stopped to watch - at least a few at every shop, over a dozen at some. Simultaneous translation of the speech as broadcast on state-run Vietam Television largely drowned out the original English.

CBS News Correspondent Bill Plante reports most of Mr. Clinton's remarks were rendered clearly, but the translation became hopelessly garbled when the subject turned to human rights.

For example, President Clinton's words: "In our experience, guaranteeing the right to religious worship and the right to political dissent does not threaten the stability of the society; instead it builds people's confidence in the fairness of the institution" were translated as: "According to our experience, the issue of allowing worshipping, allowing, (pause) that does not affect the regime but to improve our regime."

Mr. Clinton's exhortation to the people that "only you can decide how to weave individual liberties and human rights into the rich and strong fabric of Vietnamese national identity" was translated as "only you can decide (pause) on how to live with the issue, um, (pause) in the issue that human rights in Vietnam and in the society then you make a decision on your own."

Complete Coverage

Return To Vietnam
The President's Visit
The latest details of President Clinton's trip to Vietnam.
Now And Then
The Vietnam War is a distant memory for the Vietnamese, more than half of whom have been born since it ended.
Two Faces of Vietnam
The influence of the West lives side-by-side with ancient customs in many areas.
Stocks And Bounds
The country's new stock market is hobbled by limits the government, leery of free-market principles, is imposing on it.

Capping Motorbike Deaths
The number of fatalities from motorbike accidents is so serious that one of President Clinton's priorities is putting helmets on drivers.

Vietnamese who listened to the speech said the poor translation made Mr. Clinton's remarks on human rights totally incomprehensible.

Speaking of the long war he opposed and avoided by maneuvering around the draft three decades ago, President Clinton said the suffering shared by Americans and Vietnamese alike in the war "has given our countries a relationship unlike any others."

The pain, he said, is shared through the 1 million Americans of Vietnamese ancestry, the 3 million U.S. veterans and others wo served here during the conflict, and "are forever connected to your country."

"Finally, America is coming to see Vietnam as your people have asked for years, as a country, not a war," said Mr. Clinton, calling the country one that is "emerging from years of conflict and uncertainty to shape a bright future."

President Clinton urged that it be a future built on freer trade - and the freedom to explore, travel, think, speak, worship and dissent.

"All this makes our country stronger in good times and in bad," said Mr. Clinton. "We do not seek to impose these ideals, nor should we. Vietnam is an ancient and enduring country."

"You have proved to the world that you will make your own decisions," he said. "Let us continue to help each other heal the wounds of war, not by forgetting ... but by embracing the spirit of reconciliation."

War veteran Nguyen Van Kich, 67, said the speech was "very interesting. He talked about the past, but also talked about a better future for our relationship."

Le Thanh Hai, a 40-year-old physician, thought Mr. Clinton should have said more about U.S. forces' use of Agent Orange during the war.

Reuters
Hillary and Chelsea Clinton
tour Phu Tang village,
where a loan program is
in place to try to help
women work their
way out of poverty.

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Mr. Clinton started his trip at the presidential palace, where he conferred with Vietnamese President Tran Duc Luong.

U.S. Ambassador Pete Peterson, who was a prisoner of war in Vietnam, and Vietnamese officials signed an agreement for cooperation in science and technology, including efforts to control AIDS and other diseases. They also signed a memorandum on labor cooperation, for worker safety, dealing with the disabled, skills training and other points.

The Vietnamese told Mr. Clinton they will sign an international convention aimed at curbing child labor abuses.