Christopher to visit Hanoi

Christopher to visit Hanoi

WASHINGTON (Reuter): Secretary of State Warren Christopher will make a four-nation tour of Asia at the end of July, culminating in a historic visit to Vietnam to mark the opening of relations, the State Department said on Wednesday.

Christopher will attend the annual meeting of the six-country Association of South-East Asian Nations (ASEAN) in Brunei from July 31 to Aug. 3 and will visit Malaysia and Cambodia, spokesman Nicholas Burns said.

But the high point of his trip will be his Aug. 5-6 visit to Vietnam, where he will inaugurate a U.S. embassy. President Bill Clinton opened diplomatic relations with Hanoi on Tuesday, more than 20 years after the end of the Vietnam war in which 58,000 Americans died.

Christopher, who will be the first U.S. secretary of state to visit Vietnam since William Rogers in 1970, will focus his talks on the more than 2,200 Americans still listed as missing in action (MIA) in southeast Asia, Burns said.