Lord advises Hanoi recognition

By Sid Balman Jr.

WASHINGTON (UPI): U.S. Secretary of State Warren Christopher's most senior aide for Asian affairs has recommended that his boss visit Vietnam this summer and advise President Bill Clinton to normalize relations with Hanoi, U.S. officials said Tuesday.

The formal recommendation came last week from Assistant Secretary of State Winston Lord, they said, who led a delegation to Hanoi during May that included senior officials from the Pentagon and Department of Veterans Affairs. Lord has so far refused to publicly discuss what advice he offered Christopher.

But several senior U.S. officials involved in the debate over normalization with Vietnam agreed to discuss Lord's recommendation providing they were not identified by name or agency.

They said Lord concluded after his trip that it was "time to move on Vietnam." During the visit, Vietnamese authorities handed over more remains of American servicemen and additional information on sites where evidence might be located that would help clear up the fate of some 2,000 soldiers still unaccounted for since the war.

"Winston was very, very impressed at the amount of progress that has been made," a senior U.S. official said. "He gave Christopher the green light on the trip and recognition."

That official and others cautioned that Christopher must endorse Lord's recommendation before passing it on to Clinton. Even then, they say, the president may not accept it.

Clinton, who lifted a U.S. trade embargo on Vietnam and opened a diplomatic "liaison office" in Hanoi, has said the decision to normalize relations with the former enemy hinges on obtaining the "fullest possible accounting" on POWS and MIAS. U.S. officials say Clinton does not expect "every single" case to be resolved, but he must be satisfied with Hanoi's level of cooperation.

Pentagon forensic experts in the Central Identification Laboratory Hawaii, located at Hickam Air Force base outside of Honolulu, have been able to resolve the fate of all but 2,205 American soldiers missing since the war. Nearly 58,000 U.S. servicemen and women died in a failed effort to prevent communists from taking over South Vietnam.

The question of normalization with Vietnam is a political hot potato for Clinton, who like many of his generation protested the war and sidestepped the draft. The president has a narrow window of opportunity to act on Vietnam before his reelection campaign goes into full swing next year, U.S. officials said, and might opt to "avoid the heat" until a possible second term in the White House.

Clinton is unlikely to dispatch Christopher to Hanoi during late July or early August absent a decision to establish full relations, they said. An American secretary of state has not visited Vietnam since the fall of Saigon in April 1975, which unified North and South under the communist government in Hanoi.

Christopher could travel to Hanoi as part of a trip to Southeast Asia in early August. U.S. officials say he is planning to attend a meeting in Brunei of foreign ministers from the Association of Southeast Asian Nations and considering stops in Japan, South Korea, Cambodia and Vietnam.