Bush Sees Hope for Iraq in Vietnam

George Bush struggled today 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.

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.

The president also hopes to press his crusade for trade liberalisation in the Pacific Rim, and will have a series of individual meetings with Asian leaders on North Korea.

However, Mr Bush's economic agenda was undermined by the Republicans' defeat in mid-term elections. The weakened president was forced to arrive empty handed after Congress refused to normalise trade relations with Vietnam, a decision that came as deep disappointment to Mr Bush's hosts.

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 in Vietnam, Mr Bush is only the second serving president to visit the country, and the timing could not be more awkward - just as the administration is exploring the possibility of a new strategy to replace its failed policies in Iraq.

White House officials said today that Mr Bush was repeatedly assured by Vietnamese leaders that Hanoi was eager to put the past to rest. So too was the president, but he was invariably drawn into making parallels with Iraq.

Although he is under increasing pressure from an ascendant Democratic party to set out a plan for a withdrawal of troops from Iraq, he yielded no ground, claiming 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 Iraqis going to take a while," he said. "We'll succeed unless we quit."

Mr Bush's visit comes at a time when Washington is expanding its relationship with Vietnam from trade to security cooperation, 12 years after ties were restored. A product of the Vietnam war generation although he did his military service in the Texas air national guard, the president seemed at times overwhelmed by the sheer fact of his presence in the capital of the US's erstwhile communist enemy.

That disconnect shone through during a display of pomp and 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 US national anthem.

He then proceeded up the steps of the presidential palace for the first of a series of meetings with Vietnamese officials - all conducted under a large bronze bust of the revolutionary leader, Ho Chi Minh.

Mr Bush then ventured into what had once been the nerve centre of enemy terrain, meeting the Communist chief, Nong Duc Manh, at the party's headquarters. Mr Nong told reporters that Washington'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.

The prison where he was held, now a museum, is not on Mr Bush's itinerary. The president's most direct confrontation with the Vietnam war comes tomorrow when he visits the PoW/MIA command, where Vietnamese and US officials try to find the remains of those still unaccounted for in the war.

On Sunday, he will attend 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, former known as Saigon, where the US suffered its first military defeat in 1975.

Despite the echoes of a war lost, Mr Bush insisted today that he remained focused on the future, and Washington'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.