2 GOP Senators’ Goal Is Better U.S.-Hanoi Ties

For Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), the moment came last month, when he realized it was the 15th anniversary of his release from a prisoner-of-war camp in Hanoi. “I said to myself, ‘I think it’s time,’ ” he says.

For Sen. Larry Pressler (R-S.D.), the moment came early this month when he traveled to Vietnam and revisited the small town in the Mekong Delta where he served in the U.S. Army’s pacification program in 1968. Pressler says he became aware, once again, of “the common bond that exists between Vietnam and the United States.”

Now, to the consternation and surprise of the Administration, these two senators, both conservative Republicans, are spearheading an unusual drive on Capitol Hill to persuade the United States to upgrade its relations with Vietnam.

McCain and Pressler recently introduced a resolution calling on President Reagan to clear the way for the United States and Vietnam to open interests sections in each others’ capital cities--a move that is often the first step toward establishment of diplomatic relations. Their move has been supported by other Republican conservatives, including Sens. Alan K. Simpson (R-Wyo.), Frank H. Murkowski (R-Alaska) and Nancy Landon Kassebaum (R-Kan.).

Change in Politics

There have been a few similar efforts in the past to improve relations with Vietnam, but they have been led primarily by groups that had opposed the Vietnam War, such as the American Friends Service Committee, and by liberals such as Sen. Mark O. Hatfield (R-Ore.). So the new initiative by the Republican right wing has begun to change the domestic politics of the Vietnam issue.

“In the past, the major roadblock to improving relations with Vietnam came from conservatives,” observes Barry Kasinitz of Vietnam Veterans of America.

While there is no indication that the President will accept the senators’ proposal, the ferment on the Republican right seriously complicates the Reagan Administration’s policy toward Vietnam.

The Administration took some steps last year toward cooperation with Vietnam on such matters as allowing private humanitarian aid. But it also seeks to keep Vietnam as politically and economically isolated as possible until after that nation agrees to withdraw its troops from neighboring Cambodia. Vietnam invaded Cambodia in 1978 and installed a government sympathetic to Hanoi to replace the murderous Khmer Rouge regime.

“Our policy has been to support and maintain the political isolation into which Vietnam’s occupation of Cambodia has put it,” a State Department official active on Southeast Asian policy said last week. The official said that the Administration opposes McCain’s and Pressler’s resolution because “it would conflict with the policy we’ve had on Cambodia for the past nine years.”

Talks Broke Down Over Aid

Shortly after the regime in Hanoi took over South Vietnam in 1975, it began seeking to restore relations with the United States. During the early years of the Jimmy Carter Administration, however, talks broke down because of Vietnam’s insistence that it was entitled to U.S. aid for reconstruction of its war-torn country.

In late 1978, Vietnam signed a friendship treaty with the Soviet Union, and it sent its troops into Cambodia. Since then, the United States has not only refused to recognize Vietnam but has maintained a trade embargo against the country and a ban on all governmental aid there.

In separate interviews, both Pressler and McCain complained about what they called the inflexibility of U.S. policy toward Vietnam. “I’m very disappointed in the State Department for taking a very rigid line on this,” Pressler said.

“After you examine the snail’s pace of negotiations (between the United States and Vietnam) over the 13 years since the fall of Saigon, it becomes clear (that) there has been very little real progress,” McCain said. “Perhaps that’s Vietnam’s fault, but it’s hard to gauge.”

An interests section, such as the one McCain is urging the United States to open in Hanoi, is a small office with full-time diplomatic staff inside another government’s embassy. It allows two governments to meet and conduct some official business without establishing full diplomatic relations.

McCain and Pressler say that the office could be of concrete help in handling a number of problems between the United States and Vietnam, such as making arrangements for the resettlement of Amerasian children in this country. They also argue that since there are already full-scale U.S. embassies in the Soviet Union and Nicaragua, and an interests section in Cuba, an interests section in Hanoi should not be objectionable.

Many conservatives do not agree with McCain and Pressler.

“If we do what they want, it will have the effect of breaking down the U.S. aid and trade embargo against Vietnam and give the Vietnamese exactly what they want without having to do anything in return,” says Kenneth J. Conboy, Southeast Asia analyst for the conservative Heritage Foundation.

“I don’t think anybody would have expected McCain or Pressler to do this,” said Conboy. “ . . . I think Pressler went over there (to Vietnam) and just swallowed the bait they (Vietnamese officials) gave him.”

Others active on Vietnam issues say they believe that McCain and Pressler are accurately reflecting the views of many Vietnam veterans.

“It’s hard to imagine the emotional pull that this issue has on veterans,” asserted Bob Eaton, a former American Friends Service Committee member who favors reconciliation between the United States and Vietnam.

Eaton says that McCain is in a unique position to take the lead in calling for improved relations with Vietnam because he is a war hero, a former POW and a conservative Republican. “The Democrats are scared of getting clobbered on an issue like this,” he maintains.

Four Served in Vietnam

McCain and Pressler are two of the four members of the Senate who served in Vietnam. The other two are Sens. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Albert Gore Jr. (D-Tenn.). Kerry has joined in their call to create interests sections for the two governments. A spokesman for Gore said he has not taken a position on the issue.

Kasinitz, the spokesman for the Vietnam Veterans of America, says that his organization has taken no position yet on McCain’s and Pressler’s proposal, but he notes that the veterans’ group has long been in favor of improving U.S.-Vietnamese relations.

The move by the conservative Republicans also adds a new dimension to the continuing controversy over what to do about the 2,404 American servicemen listed as missing in action in Indochina.

Although the Reagan Administration’s public statements make clear that its top priority is getting Vietnamese troops out of Cambodia, the Administration also has said that the United States should not normalize relations until it gets a full accounting of these MIAs.

Vietnam handed over the remains of eight servicemen last fall and another 44 so far this year. American officials have long charged that Vietnam is holding back the remains of U.S. MIAs so that they can be used to help gain diplomatic recognition and economic aid from Washington.

Ann Mills Griffiths, executive director of the National League of Families of American Prisoners and Missing in Southeast Asia, said that her organization opposes McCain’s call for upgrading relations with Vietnam while the MIA question is unresolved.

The growing congressional interest in Vietnam comes at a delicate time for the Reagan Administration. U.S. officials now appear to be exploring hurriedly the possibility that President Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail S. Gorbachev might make progress toward resolving Cambodia’s political future during their summit in Moscow next month.

On April 15, at a news conference in Bangkok, Thailand, Soviet Deputy Foreign Minister Igor A. Rogachev said that the planned Soviet withdrawal from Afghanistan might serve as a model for the resolution of other “regional conflicts” like Cambodia. This week, Assistant Secretary of State Gaston Sigur will meet with Rogachev in Europe to hear what ideas the Soviet Union might have for getting Vietnam’s troops out of Cambodia.