No More POWs, Says Visiting Vietnamese : Foreign relations: Communist official ousted from the party and seeking asylum says Americans can hasten democracy in his homeland by forging links.

A Vietnamese Communist official, who was reportedly ousted from his party for criticizing the current government, asserted Saturday that there are no more American prisoners of war in Vietnam and urged Washington to speed up normalization of relations with the Southeast Asian country.

“Right now, America has the chance to turn defeat into victory,” said Senior Col. Bui Tin. In the past, “America’s goal was to rescue democracy for South Vietnam. Now, there is opportunity to help install democracy for the entire nation.”

To resume diplomatic and economic ties--a process that Secretary of State James A. Baker III said Wednesday the United States was ready to start--would encourage an uprising and bring the collapse of communism in Vietnam, Tin said.

Tin, 63, arrived Friday in Orange County, home to the largest concentration of Vietnamese outside Vietnam, in an attempt to persuade exiles to return and help rebuild their birthplace. Those who hosted discussions with Tin asked that they not be identified, since conservatives in the local Vietnamese community believe that Tin may be misrepresenting himself as a voice of dissidents.

“If he really loves our land, he should go back to Vietnam where he has the prestige to work for democracy from the inside out,” said Hung Le, chairman of the Vietnamese-American Republican Heritage Assn. of Orange County. Le said he believes Tin is here for another reason.

“It is a trick to test the Vietnamese community here,” Le said. “If we (had) a court of citizens here we would try him. He is guilty of many heavy crimes against the homeland, and he still dares to show his face in the Vietnamese community here.”

Tin left Vietnam in September, 1990, when the Communist newspaper L’Humanite invited him to participate in a Paris seminar on the role of the French military in Indochina. He stayed on, and since late November has advocated democratic reforms in his country in radio broadcasts via the British Broadcasting Corp.’s Vietnamese-language service. The broadcasts could be heard in Vietnam.

His trip to the United States, partially sponsored by the Washington-based Institute for Democracy in Vietnam, began Oct. 14. While in Washington, he reportedly discussed MIA/POW issues with various members of Congress.

“I told them (members of Congress) that . . . I have criticized the (Vietnamese) government for having re-education camps that have caused a lot of suffering; I have criticized the system of collective farming as harmful to our economy; I have criticized the corruption in the regime; but I have to say that on the prisoners issue they have been totally honest,” Tin said in an interview.

He said he had closely observed prisoners of war in the north in 1963 and helped supervise their release 10 years later when a cease-fire agreement was signed by the United States, South Vietnam and the Viet Cong delegations.

“Based on those conditions, I can guarantee there are no more American prisoners of war in Vietnam,” Tin said. “All incidents of MIA sightings have either been forged or stemmed from misunderstandings. There are always film crews from the Soviet Union in our cities, and people on the street think they see Americans.”

Tin said he will return Nov. 9 to France, where he has asked for political asylum.

“I will not return to Vietnam unless there has been a drive in the party to accept democracy,” he said. “Communism should not stay; the form of government should be changed. But changes should come in peace, not in slaughter. The regime should be changed by pressure by the people and by the international community. An election would lead to freedom.”

He is appalled by the criticisms from Vietnamese in the United States, especially since the Communist Party branded him a traitor shortly after his public denouncements. Communist officials have also interrogated his wife and family in Hanoi, he said.

Tin said he learned of his expulsion from the party by reading Vietnamese-language newspapers in Paris. Tin, the son of a justice minister in the prewar Vietnamese imperial court, joined Ho Chi Minh’s guerrilla army in 1945 to fight against French rule in Indochina despite his family’s protest.

He battled South Vietnam and the United States as a colonel and war correspondent for the army newspaper. On April 30, 1975, Tin rode one of the first North Vietnamese tanks onto the grounds of President Nguyen Van Thieu’s presidential palace in Saigon. He accepted the enemy’s surrender as the highest ranking officer on the scene.