O.C. Conservative Front Split by Vietnam Debate : Congress: Dornan opposes rapprochement with the Communist government, while Rohrabacher supports it.

The Bush Administration’s decision to push for friendlier relations with the Socialist Republic of Vietnam has driven a deep wedge into the usually united conservative front in Congress, and has left two Orange County representatives on different sides of the debate.

Rep. Robert K. Dornan (R-Garden Grove)--who represents nearly 80,000 Vietnamese Americans, more than any other member of the House--is digging in for a tough fight with the Administration over its plan to offer Vietnam new economic and diplomatic incentives in exchange for help in ending the fighting in neighboring Cambodia.

Usually one of President Bush’s strongest supporters, Dornan is scheduled to introduce a House resolution calling on the Administration to abandon its plans for a diplomatic rapprochement with Vietnam’s Communist government. He said he believes that he can sign up 100 Republican co-sponsors for the measure.

“I think Bush is following the course with Vietnam that he was following with Iraq, prior to the Kuwaiti invasion,” Dornan said, in an uncharacteristically harsh appraisal of a Republican President who has called Dornan his “No. 1” campaign surrogate.

But another Orange County conservative, who traveled to Vietnam four months ago, said he believes that the Administration is taking the right step by pursuing a new diplomatic course in Southeast Asia. “I would think that an approach, as long as it is a cautious approach, to Vietnam is justified,” said Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Long Beach), who represents northwestern Orange County.

The differing views of Dornan and Rohrabacher, who both represent Vietnamese-Americans and who both have made foreign policy in Southeast Asia a prime personal concern, illustrate the deep divisions remaining in both Congress and the Republican Party over the issue of Vietnam.

While Dornan opposes it, the Administration’s policy is backed by Sen. John S. McCain, an Arizona Republican and former Navy pilot who was a prisoner of war in North Vietnam for nearly six years.

Of immediate interest to the United States is settling the war that has raged in Cambodia since 1979--a year after Vietnamese troops invaded the country, ousted the ruling Khmer Rouge government and installed a government backed by Vietnam. During the three-year Khmer Rouge reign in the mid-1970s, more than a million Cambodians died as a result of political repression, hunger and disease.

Khmer Rouge guerrillas, armed by the Chinese, and non-Communist resistance groups have been waging a bloody civil war against the Cambodian government installed by Vietnam. Vietnam announced more than a year ago that it had withdrawn its occupying troops from Cambodia, although many believe that a large number of “advisers” remain.

Last summer, the five permanent members of the United Nations approved a detailed peace plan for Cambodia. But in recent months, both Vietnam and its client Cambodian government of Premier Hun Sen have resisted the peace initiative, arguing that it would require Cambodia to give up too much sovereignty to U.N.-sponsored overseers.

Rohrabacher believes that the incentives offered by the United States could encourage Vietnam’s Communist government not only to help achieve peace in Cambodia, but also to free political prisoners, establish a free market economy, resolve the issue of American soldiers still missing in action and ultimately embrace a multi-party political system.

“We want to see political pluralism as well as commercial ties emerge from any type of normalization process,” Rohrabacher said. “I have talked very extensively with the people who run the State Department desk for Vietnam and that area of the world, and what they are looking for right now is a first step. . . . Our first step would be the elimination of the Trading With the Enemy Act,” the trade embargo that has helped cripple the Vietnamese economy.

The question, Rohrabacher said, “is ‘Should we be encouraging both parties to start walking down that path?’ And the answer is ‘Yes, but cautiously.’ ”

But Dornan disagrees.

“Everything that the voices in the State Department are saying is wrong,” he said. The Vietnamese government, Dornan said, is “one of the major human rights violators in the world. . . . They still have re-education camps. They are absolutely unrepentant.”

What the United States must do, Dornan said, is wait for a change of leadership in Vietnam. “What it requires is a figure like (Soviet President Mikhail S.) Gorbachev coming to the fore,” he said. As long as Vietnam remains in the hands of older men steeped in hard-line Communist political doctrine, the country is not likely to move toward liberalizing its social and political life, Dornan said.

“We didn’t know how much of the geriatric set was left there--obviously enough of them to keep passing the reins of power around their dying-off Politburo. But nothing is going to change until they get a totally new leader.”

Many of Dornan’s constituents appear to back his view. When news of the State Department initiative first leaked out last week, the Vietnamese-American community in Orange County swiftly and decisively denounced it.

Dornan and Rohrabacher agree on what the first priority should be after the Cambodia issue is resolved--finding answers to remaining questions about U.S. servicemen who disappeared during the Vietnam War.

Dornan said it would be “miraculous” if any American serviceman remains alive in Southeast Asia against his will. However, the congressman said he is all but certain that the Vietnamese government maintains warehouses containing the remains of about 400 soldiers and pilots who died in Vietnam.

The remains, Dornan said, are being used “as a cynical, vicious bargaining chip in the restoration of economic relations.”

Rohrabacher suggested that some American pilots shot down over Laos during the war may still be alive and held prisoner.

“I believe the Vietnamese and the Laotians could come forward now at long last and admit that they’ve got some Americans over there,” Rohrabacher said, “and they could experience a positive benefit rather than negative repercussions.”