November 7, 1995
Web posted at: 3:40 p.m. EST (2040 GMT)
HANOI, Vietnam (CNN) -- Robert McNamara, secretary of defense during the administrations of Lyndon Johnson and John F. Kennedy, is in Vietnam, 30 years after his first visit during the Vietnam war. The trip supposedly was designed to help heal the wounds from the conflict that became known among some in the United States as "McNamara's war."
Twenty years after the war ended, McNamara admitted in his book "In Retrospect: The Tragedy and Lessons of Vietnam" that the United States was "wrong, terribly wrong" to have continued the war after 1963.
In a four-day visit to Hanoi, McNamara will meet with war-time foes Nguyen Thi Binh, Phan Van Khai, and General Vo Nguyen Giap. The sponsor of the trip, the U.S. Council on Foreign Relations, plans to invite Giap and others to the United States next year for a conference on the Vietnam War. During this trip, the council is expected to ask Vietnamese authorities to open the country's archives from the war.
In a move apparently designed to improve relations with the United States, the Vietnamese released from prison and expelled two Vietnamese-Americans convicted of attempting to overthrow the government. Nguyen Tan Tri of Houston, Texas, and Tran Quang Liem of Santa Clara, California, were put on a flight from Hanoi after spending two years in jail. The U.S. government had been pressuring the Vietnamese to release the pair before any improvement in trade relations would be considered. Since their conviction in August the Vietnamese had said both would have to serve their full jail terms.
The release, coupled with the McNamara visit and the arrival of several other trade delegations, including that of U.S. Secretary of Transportation Federico Pena, may be an indication of closer ties and a willingness to put the war in the past.
![[Imagemap]](/WORLD/images/world_nav.gif)
Copyright © 1995 Cable News Network, Inc.
ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.
External sites are not endorsed by CNN Interactive.