U.S. Opens Way for Vietnam Ties : Diplomacy: After Cambodian settlement, Baker announces steps toward reconciliation and offers talks. He says the POW-MIA issue is still a matter of concern.

Secretary of State James A. Baker III sought Wednesday to resolve decades of enmity between the United States and Vietnam, saying the two nations should quickly begin talks to normalize their relations.

Seizing upon the diplomatic opportunities presented with the signing by Vietnam, the United States and 17 other nations of an international peace accord on Cambodia, Baker said the only major issues still blocking normal relations between the onetime battlefield foes involve resolution of “POW-MIA and other humanitarian issues.”

He held out the prospect that the United States soon could lift a 16-year-old economic embargo against Vietnam, which has become one of the world’s most impoverished nations after years of civil war and battles with its neighbors and other outside powers.

In his speech at the Kleber International Conference Center, across the street from the old Majestic Hotel where the Vietnam peace agreement was concluded 18 years ago, Baker invited Vietnamese representatives to begin talks in New York “concerning the issue and modalities associated with normalization of diplomatic relations between the United States and Vietnam.”

He also announced other tentative but symbolic steps toward reconciliation, including the lifting of a 25-mile travel limit placed on Vietnamese diplomats assigned to the United Nations in New York.

And in a move that could have the most dramatic effect on American citizens, he said: “We will also be taking steps to change our trade embargo rules to permit U.S.-organized travel to Vietnam by individuals and groups such as veterans, journalists, businessmen and tour groups.”

Since the 1975 end of the conflict that claimed more than 58,000 American lives, interest has built among veterans and other citizens to visit the site of the traumatic conflict. Families of the 2,300 American servicemen listed as prisoners or missing in action have pressed a drive to enter Vietnam to search for their kin.

Earlier in the day, Baker met at the Inter-Continental Hotel in Paris with Vietnamese Foreign Minister Nguyen Manh Cam.

Before going into that meeting, he predicted that the U.S.-Vietnamese talks would begin “within the next month or so.” Last April, U.S. officials outlined a four-part program to re-establish relations with Vietnam that was linked to the Cambodian peace agreement.

During the long Cambodian civil war, the United States and Vietnam were on opposite sides. The Vietnamese government, along with its Soviet allies, backed the Communist regime headed by Premier Hun Sen. The United States backed former Cambodian monarch Prince Norodom Sihanouk and other non-Communist opposition forces.

But the collapse of communism in the Soviet Union, along with the economic hardships caused by the U.S. embargo of Vietnam, eventually pressured the Vietnamese to withdraw their troops from Cambodia and pushed the Hun Sen government toward reconciliation with the other Cambodian parties.

Under the terms of the Cambodian peace settlement signed here Wednesday, the United Nations will assume temporary administrative and security duties in the country. Once the U.N. administration is established in Phnom Penh, the United States has pledged to partially lift the trade embargo against Vietnam.

If the U.N. administration lasts six months in Cambodia, the United States has said it will consider a full lifting of the trade embargo that has crippled the economy of Vietnam, which with a per-capita income of only $200, is one of the world’s poorest countries.

Vietnam, which has had close links to both China and the Soviet Union, indicated in 1984-85 that it would welcome normalized relations with the United States. But the Americans insisted that this could not occur until MIA-POW issues were resolved.

There was some easing of tensions between the two nations in the ensuing years. But the process stalled and the Vietnamese expressed irritation because they said the Americans had not given sufficient credit to Hanoi’s efforts to meet U.S. demands.

But almost a year ago, Nguyen Co Thach, then Vietnam’s foreign minister, met with Baker in New York in what was the highest-level contact between the two governments since the war’s end. Their discussions and subsequent talks, including negotiations in Hanoi, have led to significant shifts between the countries.

The final establishment of full diplomatic and trade relations with Vietnam now is envisioned for 1993, after U.N.-supervised elections in Cambodia.

Asked about Vietnamese reaction to discussions of normalizing relations, a State Department official said both sides agree now that “new possibilities to move toward normalized relations” exist. How much progress is made will depend on implementation of the Cambodia accords that have now been signed, and on “continued progress on the POW-MIA issue in order to move beyond Phase I of the process” of normalization, the official said.

“Phase I” was this official’s description of the package announced by Baker in his speech here.

The senior official listed these U.S. moves as, first, lifting the 25-mile limit; second, permitting organized group travel to Vietnam; third, opening the U.S. liaison office in Cambodia; fourth, lifting the U.S. trade embargo and supporting International Monetary Fund and World Bank loans for Cambodia; and fifth, “Begin talks (next month) about the formalities and modalities of mobilization” of U.S. relations with Hanoi.

Baker stressed that the POW-MIA issue “is still a matter of extreme concern to the United States,” the official said. “There has to be very substantial progress on this issue, if we are going to see the political basis for a normalization develop over the coming months.”

Asked about the possibility of opening liaison offices in Washington and Hanoi, the official said that this is “further down the road.” He volunteered, however, that by allowing group travel to Hanoi, the U.S. “begins lifting the trade embargo.”

The path to peace between the two former foes, both scarred by the experience of the long war in Vietnam, may finally end with the two countries as economic partners.

An indication of the time that has elapsed came in an encounter at the U.S. delegation press room Wednesday afternoon. A young radio reporter turned to another journalist of the Vietnam War era and asked: “The Vietnam War. When was it exactly?”

BACKGROUND

Vietnam is one of the world’s poorest nations, with a per capita annual income estimated at $200. The United States instituted a trade embargo in 1975. After Vietnam invaded Cambodia in late 1978, it placed other conditions on restoring diplomatic ties. These included Vietnam’s help in resolving the Cambodia conflict and a comprehensive accounting of MIAs from the Vietnam War. Vietnam’s leaders began economic reforms in 1986, but its Communist Party maintains a stranglehold on political power.