'Long March of History' Comforts Bush in Vietnam

George Bush struggled yesterday to escape the shadows of wars past and present in Vietnam and Iraq, holding up his presence in Hanoi as proof of the possibilities of reconciliation.

His visit comes as America is expanding its relationship with Vietnam from trade to military cooperation and joint efforts to fight avian flu. But President Bush, a product of the Vietnam war generation who did his military service in the Texas air national guard, seemed at times overwhelmed by the sheer fact of his presence in the capital of America's erstwhile communist enemy.

That incongruity was evident during a display of pageantry at Vietnam's presidential palace as Mr Bush looked out across the lawns to the headquarters of the Communist party, listening to Vietnamese military bands playing the American national anthem. The president then proceeded up the steps of the deep yellow palace for the first of a series of meetings with Vietnamese officials - all conducted under a large bronze bust of the country's revolutionary leader, Ho Chi Minh.

Mr Bush also ventured into what had once been the nerve centre of enemy terrain, meeting the Communist chief, Nong Duc Manh, at the party headquarters. Mr Nong told reporters that America's relationship with Vietnam had embarked on a new chapter.

Other encounters with the past were far less comfortable. Mr Bush confessed he was moved when his motorcade took him past the lake where the Republican senator John McCain was shot down while a navy pilot during the Vietnam war. Mr McCain spent five years as a prisoner in Hanoi.

That prison, now a museum, is not on Mr Bush's itinerary. The most direct confrontation with the Vietnam war arrives today when Mr Bush visits the PoW/ Missing In Action command where Vietnamese and US officials try to find the remains of those still unaccounted for in the war.

Tomorrow he is attending church services in Hanoi - a gesture intended to put gentle pressure on the Vietnamese authorities to allow religious freedom - before flying to Ho Chi Minh City, the former Saigon, where America suffered its first defeat in war in 1975.

Despite the echoes of that lost war, Mr Bush insisted yesterday that he remained focused on the future, and America's deepening relationship with its former foe. "My first reaction is, history has a long march to it, and that societies change and relationships can constantly be altered for good," he told reporters.

The White House is promoting Mr Bush's visit to Hanoi for an Asian summit as a chance to advance a relationship with an emerging economic power; Vietnam's growth rate is the second fastest in the region, after China's. The US leader also hopes to press his campaign for trade liberalisation in the Pacific Rim, and has a series of individual meetings on North Korea.

However, Mr Bush's economic agenda was undermined by the Republicans' defeat in midterm elections. The weakened president was also forced to arrive empty-handed after Congress refused to normalise trade relations with Vietnam. But the biggest distraction for a president determined to look to the future was the constant tug of the past. Thirty-one years after the war, Mr Bush is only the second serving president to visit Vietnam, and the timing of his visit could not be more awkward - just as he is exploring the possibility of a new strategy to replace its failed policies in Iraq.

White House officials said yesterday that Mr Bush was repeatedly assured by Vietnamese leaders that Hanoi was eager to put the past to rest. So too was Mr Bush, but he was invariably drawn back to the war in Vietnam and the parallels with Iraq.

Vietnam says the drive to deepen relations with America is part of a broader policy of building strong global ties. "The Vietnamese people have always had a policy of co-existence," says Nguyen Ngoc Dung, an envoy for the communist government during the war years. "It is useless to always be thinking about the past. That just leads to confrontation - not only with the Americans, but within our own families because so many people were working with the Americans."

Although the president is under pressure from the Democratic party to set out a plan for a withdrawal of troops from Iraq, he claimed the experience of Vietnam had convinced him of the need for patience. "One lesson is, is that we tend to want there to be instant success in the world, and the task in Iraq is going to take a while," he said. "We'll succeed unless we quit."

Unlike President Bill Clinton, whose visit in 2000 met with an outpouring of affection from Vietnamese, there was only muted popular reaction to Mr Bush's arrival in Hanoi. Even so, that reception was far better than the welcome being prepared for Mr Bush on his next stop in Indonesia where protesters burning pictures of the US president brought traffic to a halt yesterday.

Mr Bush's planned brief visit to Indonesia has increased anger over American policy in the Middle East, and over the wars in Iraq and Afghanistan, which are seen by many in the country as an attack on Muslims.