[Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: WILLIAM J. CLINTON (2000-2001, Book III)]
[November 17, 2000]
[Pages 2547-2552]
[From the U.S. Government Publishing Office www.gpo.gov]



Remarks at Vietnam National University in Hanoi, Vietnam
November 17, 2000

    Thank you very much, and good afternoon. I can think of no more 
fitting place to begin my visit at this hopeful moment in our common 
history than here at Hanoi National University. I was given a Vietnamese 
phrase; I am going to try to say it. If I mess it up, feel free to laugh 
at me. Xin chao cac ban.\1\
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    \1\Hello, everybody.
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    So much of the promise of this youthful nation is embodied with you. 
I learned that you have exchanges here with students from nearly 100 
universities, from Canada to France to Korea, and that you are now 
hosting more than a dozen full-time students from your partner school in 
the United States, the University of California. I salute your vigorous 
efforts to engage the world.
    Of course, like students everywhere, I know you have things to think 
about other than your studies. For example, in September you had to 
study for your classes and watch the Olympic accomplishments of Tran 
Hieu Ngan in Sydney. And this week you have to 
study and cheer

[[Page 2548]]

Le Huynh Duc and Nguyen Hong Son in Bangkok at the football matches.
    I am honored to be the first American President to see Hanoi and to 
visit this university. But I do so conscious that the histories of our 
two nations are deeply intertwined in ways that are both a source of 
pain for generations that came before and a source of promise for 
generations yet to come.
    Two centuries ago, during the early days of the United States, we 
reached across the seas for partners in trade, and one of the first 
nations we encountered was Vietnam. In fact, one of our Founding 
Fathers, Thomas Jefferson, tried to obtain rice seed from Vietnam to 
grow on his farm in Virginia 200 years ago. By the time World War II 
arrived, the United States had become a significant consumer of exports 
from Vietnam. In 1945, at the moment of your country's birth, the words 
of Thomas Jefferson were chosen to be echoed in your own Declaration of 
Independence: ``All men are created equal. The Creator has given us 
certain inviolable rights--the right to life, the right to be free, the 
right to achieve happiness.''
    Of course, all of this common history, 200 years of it, has been 
obscured in the last few decades by the conflict we call the Vietnam war 
and you call the American war. You may know that in Washington, DC, on 
our National Mall, there is a stark black granite wall engraved with the 
name of every single American who died in Vietnam. At this solemn 
memorial, some American veterans also refer to the ``other side of the 
wall,'' the staggering sacrifice of the Vietnamese people on both sides 
of that conflict, more than 3 million brave soldiers and civilians.
    This shared suffering has given our countries a relationship unlike 
any other. Because of the conflict, America is now home to one million 
Americans of Vietnamese ancestry. Because of the conflict, 3 million 
American veterans served in Vietnam, as did many journalists, embassy 
personnel, aid workers, and others who are forever connected to your 
country.
    Almost 20 years ago now, a group of American servicemen took the 
first step to reestablish contacts between the United States and 
Vietnam. They traveled back to Vietnam for the first time since the war, 
and as they walked through the streets of Hanoi, they were approached by 
Vietnamese citizens who had heard of their visit. ``Are you the American 
soldiers?'' they asked. Not sure what to expect, our veterans answered, 
``Yes, we are.'' And to their immense relief, their hosts simply said, 
``Welcome to Vietnam.''
    More veterans followed, including distinguished American veterans 
and heroes who serve now in the United States Congress: Senator John 
McCain, Senator Bob Kerrey, Senator Chuck Robb, and 
Senator John Kerry of Massachusetts, who is 
here with us today, along with a number of Representatives from our 
Congress, some of whom are veterans of the Vietnam conflict.
    When they came here, they were determined to honor those who fought, 
without refighting the battles; to remember our history, but not to 
perpetuate it; to give young people like you in both our countries the 
chance to live in your tomorrows, not in our yesterdays. As Ambassador 
Pete Peterson has said so eloquently, ``We cannot change the past. What 
we can change is the future.''
    Our new relationship gained strength as American veterans launched 
nonprofit organizations to work on behalf of the Vietnamese people, such 
as providing devices to people with war injuries to help them lead more 
normal lives. Vietnam's willingness to help us return the remains of our 
fallen servicemen to their families has been the biggest boost to 
improve ties. And there are many Americans here who have worked in that 
endeavor for many years now, including our Secretary of Veterans 
Affairs, Hershel Gober.
    The desire to be reunited with a lost family member is something we 
all understand. It touches the hearts of Americans to know that every 
Sunday in Vietnam, one of your most-watched television shows features 
families seeking viewers' help in finding loved ones they lost in the 
war so long ago now. And we are grateful for the Vietnamese villagers 
who have helped us to find our missing and, therefore, to give their 
families the peace of mind that comes with knowing what actually 
happened to their loved ones.
    No two nations have ever before done the things we are doing 
together to find the missing from the Vietnam conflict. Teams of 
Americans and Vietnamese work together, sometimes in tight and dangerous 
places. The Vietnamese Government has offered us access to files and 
Government information to assist our search. And in turn, we have been 
able to give Vietnam almost 400,000 pages of documents that could

[[Page 2549]]

assist in your search. On this trip, I have brought with me another 
350,000 pages of documents that I hope will help Vietnamese families 
find out what happened to their missing loved ones.
    Today I was honored to present these to your President, Tran Duc 
Luong. And I told him that before the year is 
over, America will provide another million pages of documents. We will 
continue to offer our help and to ask for your help as we both honor our 
commitment to do whatever we can for as long as it takes to achieve the 
fullest possible accounting of our loved ones.
    Your cooperation in that mission over these last 8 years has made it 
possible for America to support international lending to Vietnam, to 
resume trade between our countries, to establish formal diplomatic 
relations and, this year, to sign a pivotal trade agreement.
    Finally, America is coming to see Vietnam as your people have asked 
for years, as a country, not a war, a country with the highest literacy 
rate in Southeast Asia, a country whose young people just won three gold 
medals at the International Math Olympiad in Seoul, a country of gifted, 
hard-working entrepreneurs emerging from years of conflict and 
uncertainty to shape a bright future.
    Today the United States and Vietnam open a new chapter in our 
relationship, at a time when people all across the world trade more, 
travel more, know more about and talk more with each other than ever 
before. Even as people take pride in their national independence, we 
know we are becoming more and more interdependent. The movement of 
people, money, and ideas across borders, frankly, breeds suspicion among 
many good people in every country. They are worried about globalization 
because of its unsettling and unpredictable consequences.
    Yet, globalization is not something we can hold off or turn off. It 
is the economic equivalent of a force of nature, like wind or water. We 
can harness wind to fill a sail. We can use water to generate energy. We 
can work hard to protect people and property from storms and floods. But 
there is no point in denying the existence of wind or water, or trying 
to make them go away. The same is true for globalization. We can work to 
maximize its benefits and minimize its risks, but we cannot ignore it, 
and it is not going away.
    In the last decade, as the volume of world trade has doubled, 
investment flows from wealthy nations to developing ones have increased 
by 6 times, from $25 billion in 1990 to more than $150 billion in 1998. 
Nations that have opened their economies to the international trading 
system have grown at least twice as fast as nations with closed 
economies. Your next job may well depend upon foreign trade and 
investment. Come to think of it, since I have to leave office in about 8 
weeks, my next job may depend on foreign trade and investment.
    Over the last 15 years, Vietnam launched its policy of doi moi, 
joined APEC and ASEAN, normalized relations with the European Union and 
the United States, and disbanded collective farming, freeing farmers to 
grow what they want and earn the fruits of their own labor. The results 
were impressive proof of the power of your markets and the abilities of 
your people. You not only conquered malnutrition, you became the world's 
second-largest exporter of rice and achieved stronger overall economic 
growth.
    Of course, in recent years the rate of growth has slowed and foreign 
investment has declined here, showing that any attempt to remain 
isolated from the risks of the global economy also guarantees isolation 
from its rewards, as well.
    General Secretary Le Kha Phieu said this summer, and I quote, ``We 
have yet to achieve the level of development commensurate with the 
possibilities of our country. And there is only one way to further open 
up the economy.'' So this summer, in what I believe will be seen as a 
pivotal step toward your future prosperity, Vietnam joined the United 
States in signing an historic bilateral trade agreement, building a 
foundation for Vietnam's entry eventually into the World Trade 
Organization.
    Under the agreement, Vietnam will grant to its citizens, and over 
time to citizens of other countries, rights to import, export, and 
distribute goods, giving the Vietnamese people expanding rights to 
determine their own economic destiny. Vietnam has agreed it will subject 
important decisions to the rule of law and the international trading 
system, increase the flow of information to its people, and accelerate 
the rise of a free economy and the private sector.
    Of course, this will be good for Vietnam's foreign partners, like 
the United States. But it

[[Page 2550]]

will be even better for Vietnam's own entrepreneurs, who are working 
hard to build businesses of their own. Under this agreement, Vietnam 
could be earning, according to the World Bank, another $1.5 billion each 
and every year from exports alone.
    Both our nations were born with a Declaration of Independence. This 
trade agreement is a form of declaration of interdependence, a clear, 
unequivocal statement that prosperity in the 21st century depends upon a 
nation's economic engagement in the rest of the world.
    This new openness is a great opportunity for you, but it does not 
guarantee success. What else should be done? Vietnam is such a young 
country, with 60 percent of your population under the age of 30 and 1.4 
million new people entering your work force every year. Your leaders 
realize that government and state-owned businesses cannot generate 1.4 
million new jobs every year. They know that the industries driving the 
global economy today--computers, telecommunications, biotechnology--
these are all based on knowledge. That is why economies all over the 
world grow faster when young people stay in school longer, when women 
have the same educational opportunities that men have, when young people 
like you have every opportunity to explore new ideas and then to turn 
those ideas into your own business opportunities.
    You can be--indeed, those of you in this hall today must be--the 
engine of Vietnam's future prosperity. As President Tran Duc Luong has 
said, the internal strength of the country is the intellect and capacity 
of its people.
    The United States has great respect for your intellect and capacity. 
One of our Government's largest educational exchange programs is with 
Vietnam, and we want to do more. Senator Kerry, who's right there--and I mentioned him earlier--is leading 
an effort in our United States Congress, along with Senator John 
McCain and other veterans of the conflict here, 
to establish a new Vietnam Education Foundation. Once enacted, the 
foundation would support 100 fellowships every year, either here or in 
the United States, for people to study or teach science, math, 
technology, and medicine.
    We're ready to put more funding in our exchange programs now so this 
effort can get underway immediately. I hope some of you in this room 
will have a chance to take part. And I want to thank Senator 
Kerry for this great idea. Thank you, sir, for 
what you have done.
    Let me say, as important as knowledge is, the benefits of knowledge 
are necessarily limited by undue restrictions on its use. We Americans 
believe the freedom to explore, to travel, to think, to speak, to shape 
decisions that affect our lives enrich the lives of individuals and 
nations in ways that go far beyond economics.
    Now, America's record is not perfect in this area. After all, it 
took us almost a century to banish slavery. It took us even longer to 
give women the right to vote. And we are still seeking to live up to the 
more perfect Union of our Founders' dreams and the words of our 
Declaration of Independence and Constitution. But along the way over 
these 226 years--224 years--we've learned some lessons. For example, we 
have seen that economies work better where newspapers are free to expose 
corruption and independent courts can ensure that contracts are honored, 
that competition is robust and fair, that public officials honor the 
rule of law.
    In our experience, guaranteeing the right to religious worship and 
the right to political dissent does not threaten the stability of a 
society. Instead, it builds people's confidence in the fairness of our 
institutions and enables us to take it when a decision goes in a way we 
don't agree with. All this makes our country stronger in good times and 
bad. In our experience, young people are much more likely to have 
confidence in their future if they have a say in shaping it, in choosing 
their governmental leaders and having a government that is accountable 
to those it serves.
    Now, let me say emphatically, we do not seek to impose these ideals, 
nor could we. Vietnam is an ancient and enduring country. You have 
proved to the world that you will make your own decisions. Only you can 
decide, for example, if you will continue to share Vietnam's talents and 
ideas with the world, if you will continue to open Vietnam so that you 
can enrich it with the insights of others. Only you can decide if you 
will continue to open your markets, open your society, and strengthen 
the rule of law. Only you can decide how to weave individual liberties 
and human rights into the rich and strong fabric of Vietnamese national 
identity.
    Your future should be in your hands, the hands of the Vietnam 
people. But your future is important to the rest of us, as well. For as

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Vietnam succeeds, it will benefit this region and your trading partners 
and your friends throughout the world.
    We are eager to increase our cooperation with you across the board. 
We want to continue our work to clear landmines and unexploded ordnance. 
We want to strengthen our common efforts to protect the environment by 
phasing out leaded gasoline in Vietnam, maintaining a clean water 
supply, saving coral reefs and tropical forests. We want to bolster our 
efforts on disaster relief and prevention, including our efforts to help 
those suffering from the floods in the Mekong Delta. Yesterday we 
presented to your Government satellite imagery from our Global Disaster 
Information Network, images that show in great detail the latest flood 
levels on the Delta, that can help Vietnam to rebuild.
    We want to accelerate our cooperation in science, cooperation 
focused this month on our meeting in Singapore to study together the 
health and ecological effects of dioxin on the people of Vietnam and the 
Americans who were in Vietnam, and cooperation that we are advancing 
further with the science and technology agreement our two countries 
signed just today.
    We want to be your ally in the fight against killer diseases like 
AIDS, tuberculosis, and malaria. I am glad to announce that we will 
nearly double our support of Vietnam's efforts to contain the AIDS 
crisis through education, prevention, care, and treatment. We want to 
work with you to make Vietnam a safer place by giving you help to reduce 
preventable injuries on the streets, at home, and in the workplace. We 
want to work with you to make the most of this trade agreement by 
providing technical assistance to assure its smooth and full 
implementation and finding ways to encourage greater United States 
investment in your country.
    We are, in short, eager to build our partnership with Vietnam. We 
believe it's good for both our nations.
    We believe the Vietnamese people have the talent to succeed in this 
new global age, as they have in the past. We know it because we've seen 
the progress you have made in this last decade. We have seen the talent 
and ingenuity of the Vietnamese who have come to settle in America. 
Vietnamese-Americans have become elected officials, judges, leaders in 
science and in our high-tech industry. Last year a Vietnamese-American 
achieved a mathematical breakthrough that will make it easier to conduct 
high-quality videoconferencing. And all America took notice when Hoang 
Nhu Tran graduated number one in his class at 
the United States Air Force Academy.
    Vietnamese-Americans have flourished not just because of their 
unique abilities and their good values but also because they have had 
the opportunity to make the most of their abilities and their values. As 
your opportunities grow, to live, to learn, to express your creativity, 
there will be no stopping the people of Vietnam. And you will find, I am 
certain, that the American people will be by your side. For in this 
interdependent world, we truly do have a stake in your success.
    Almost 200 years ago, at the beginning of the relations between the 
United States and Vietnam, our two nations made many attempts to 
negotiate a treaty of commerce, sort of like the trade agreement that we 
signed today. But 200 years ago, they all failed, and no treaty was 
concluded. Listen to what one historian said about what happened 200 
years ago, and think how many times it could have been said in the two 
centuries since. He said, ``These efforts failed because two distant 
cultures were talking past each other, and the importance of each to the 
other was insufficient to overcome these barriers.''
    Let the days when we talk past each other be gone for good. Let us 
acknowledge our importance to one another. Let us continue to help each 
other heal the wounds of war, not by forgetting the bravery shown and 
the tragedy suffered by all sides but by embracing the spirit of 
reconciliation and the courage to build better tomorrows for our 
children.
    May our children learn from us that good people, through respectful 
dialog, can discover and rediscover their common humanity and that a 
painful, painful past can be redeemed in a peaceful and prosperous 
future.
    Thank you for welcoming me and my family and our American delegation 
to Vietnam. Thank you for your faith in the future.  Chuc cac ban suc 
khoe va thanh cong.\2\
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    \2\May you have health and success.
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    Thank you very much.

 Note:  The President spoke at 3:50 p.m. in the auditorium of the 
university. In his remarks, he referred to Hieu Ngan Tran, Vietnamese 
Olympic

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silver medalist in tae kwon do; Vietnamese national soccer team members 
Le Huynh Duc and Nguyen Hong Son; and Communist Party General Secretary 
Le Kha Phieu of Vietnam. The transcript released by the Office of the 
Press Secretary included the English translation of the Vietnamese 
phrases.