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.