Newsgroups: bit.listserv.seasia-l
Date:         Tue, 8 Sep 1992 10:13:13 -0400
From:         Nhan Tran <tran@PEORA.SDC.CCUR.COM>
Subject:      NEWS/VN: Vo Nguyen Giap urges US to help VN

09/07

GENERAL GIAP URGES UNITED STATES TO HELP VIETNAM

    By Kathleen Callo
    HANOI, Sept 7, Reuter - General Vo Nguyen Giap, the military mastermind
behind Vietnam's defeat of the French and later the Americans, is urging
Washington to lift its embargo, normalise relations with Hanoi and help rebuild
the shattered country.
    He told Reuters he would even be willing to meet retired U.S. General
William Westmoreland who, as commander of U.S. forces in Vietnam in the 1960s,
was his arch-enemy.
    "It would be a wise policy for the Americans to look to the future and to
have good relations with Vietnam...the U.S. government would be responding to
the hopes of the Vietnamese and the American people if it normalised relations,"
he said.
    "It would be good politics. It would be good for the economies of both
countries. It would be good for the spirit of both countries," he said in a
weekend interview in Hanoi.
    Giap, 81, said he had met several retired French generals over the years who
once fought against his Viet Minh troops. He urged the United States to follow
the French example and forge a new friendship with Vietnam.
    Washington has maintained a tough trade embargo against Hanoi since 1964 and
has refused to normalise relations, although it began last year to ease the
sanctions slightly.
    Giap, a retired defence minister, was conferred the Gold Star Order, one of
Vietnam's highest honours, last month.
    Asked if he would welcome a visit from Westmoreland, he first said: "You
should ask the Vietnamese government."
    But later, Giap softened. "If he came to Hanoi and he wanted to meet me, I
would meet him. I have received many visiting American veterans. They are very
surprised when I receive them in a friendly way.
    "I tell them: 'I'm Vietnamese. You're Americans. We're all human beings.
Before you came to Vietnam carrying a Thompson submachinegun, so we received you
in a certain way. This time you come as tourists, so we receive you
differently'," he said.
    Giap, a sprightly man with snow-white hair, smiled and gesticulated to drive
home each point in the 45-minute interview.
    He looked cool and composed, sitting in a government reception room that was
transformed into a virtual sauna by Hanoi's stifling summer heat.
    He said the U.S. military had wreaked devastation on Vietnam's people and
environment, but the economy was improving, thanks to market-oriented reforms
launched by the government in the mid-1980s.
    But Giap denied his country was veering from the socialist path, and said
capitalism would threaten Vietnam's independence.
    "I don't think Vietnam is advancing towards the capitalist system. Just
because we are following the market-oriented economy doesn't mean we are
capitalist...If we followed capitalism, Vietnam could become dependent on some
other countries," he said.
    Giap said Vietnam had to build its future on the one resource that had
ensured victory against the armies of France and the United States -- its
people.
    He described the battle of Dien Bien Phu in 1954, in which Viet Minh
soldiers dragged artillery up the muddy sides of mountains to defeat a
better-armed French garrison in the valley below, thus ending colonial rule in
Indochina.
    "During the war there were two factors -- human beings and weapons. Both
were important. But eventually the human factor was decisive. Modern weapons did
not win that war. Human beings were the decisive factor," he said.
    Giap said he doubted the U.S. government would heed his advice. But he
offered comfort to the American public to help them overcome the trauma of the
past.
    "It was not the American people who were defeated, because the American
people did not want the war. It was the U.S. administration and the Americans
who fought in Vietnam who were defeated. It was the U.S. military," he said.
    The relationship between Vietnam and the United States over the decades has
been filled with bizarre ironies.
    Giap described working with Americans in the jungles of northern Vietnam in
the 1940s while he was training Viet Minh guerrillas. The Americans were from
the U.S. Office of Strategic Services (OSS), the war-time precursor of the
Central Intelligence Agency, he said.
    During World War Two, small OSS teams organised local resistance in Vietnam
and China against the Japanese.
    The late nationalist leader Ho Chi Minh asked the United States several
times to help his Viet Minh fight against Japanese occupying forces and against
French colonial rulers who regained control over Indochina after the war.
    The American author Stanley Karnow described in "Vietnam: A History" how the
OSS did help Ho in 1945 when one unit parachuted into his jungle camp in
northern Vietnam and team a medical worker treated Ho for malaria, dysentery and
other tropical diseases.
    Giap urged Washington not only to normalise relations and lift its embargo
against Hanoi, but to help rebuild the country.
    "They should do something to help, something to heal the wounds of the war
-- so that the Vietnamese people would be able to build a new livelihood."
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