On June 20, 1997, the former US Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara leading an American delegation, arrived in Hanoi for a conference to discuss the missed opportunities to end the Vietnam War. sooner. Mr. McNamara said the mission was to heal wounds of the war and to help future generations with lessons from history.
The American delegation was apparently disappointed by the attitudes of Hanoi officials attending the conference.
Hanoi Deputy Minister of Foreign Affairs Dao Huy Ngoc bluntly declared that his side will be talking about the missed opportunities, but ôAnyway, Vietnam affirms that we did not miss any.ö Another Hanoi official Luu Van Loi was more offending, saying that if there were lessons to be learned, they were not for Vietnam. A similar statement was given by HanoiÆs Deputy Minister for Foreign Affairs Tran Quang Co.
There were many questions raised by the Americans in the conference, but Hanoi delegates refused to answer. The two sides showed several basic differences. While the American side wanted to limit the issue on events taking place from 1961 to 1968, Hanoi officials requested that both sides should discuss those way back from 1945.
1. Like some other conferences on the Vietnam War held in Western countries after 1975, this time there were none of the leaders of the former Republic of Vietnam attending the debate. However weak the RVN had been beside its American ally, it had some influence over the war and opportunities for peace. The absent of one of the two sides of the North-South Vietnam civil war makes such conferences look unfair.
2. Moreover, NVN General Vo Nguyen Giap did not attend. either though he was playing a key role in the war. If Mr. McNamara were conversant with Vietnamese culture, probably he would not have appeared in the conference. That Hanoi refused to respond questions from the American delegates though the two sides had agreed to the plan for the conference and did not allow Vo Nguyen Giap to appear in the conference could only be considered very tactless.
3. Probably Hanoi leaders did not need Mr. McNamaraÆs conference any more for speeding the process for full diplomatic relations with the USA as in 1995 when they had agreed to the project.
4. Everybody is aware that standing behind the North Vietnamese Communists and supporting them with enormous amounts of weapons from an AK to a MiG, including food to NVN civilians were China and the Soviet Union. The two Communist powers also played decisive roles in the Vietnam War, though covertly. They should have been represented in the conference.
5. The request of Hanoi to discuss the events taking place since as early as 1945 is reasonable. The issues of war and peace in Vietnam relate to a sequence of events at least since 1945 if not further back to the late 1920Æs. The war did not occur only when Mr. McNamara was the head of the Pentagon.
One example among others: If the USA had supported Ho chi Minh or his rivals to power in 1945 to make Vietnam its ally, the war with American human loss could have been avoided, though a bloody civil war - nationalists against communists - would have happened anyway.
6. Moreover, there had been other opportunities to end the Vietnam War not by negotiations but by victory of either side, if:
b) the Allied Forces (South Vietnamese, American, South Korean, Australian..) had launched an all-out counter-offensive, exploiting their great military success in the 1968 Tet Offensive.
7. Many statesmen and politicians often said that we should put the past behind us and forget the war ... Why McNamara and the others keep raking the ashes of the first defeat in the American history? Therefore, the true purposes of such conference are dubious.
8. Many Vietnamese ask themselves, ôWhat would have been happening if the Communist terrorist Nguyen Van Troi had not missed his opportunity to detonate his bomb right under Mr. McNamaraÆs car, when he visited Saigon for the first time?ö
Right after Secretary of State Albright left Hanoi, the Vietnamese Ministry of Foreign Affairs declared that there are no political prisoners in Vietnam. Its spokesman said that the three men whom Mrs. Albright requested the Vietnamese authorities to release from prison are criminal, not political prisoners.
So far, Hanoi officials have never had any such shameless language about the facts that are well known by every human rights group. Is that also because HanoiÆs leaders already secured diplomatic relations with the USA, so they think they could get tough with the main concerns of the Americans?
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