Clinton Officials and Vietnam Envoy Hold Talks : Southeast Asia: Hanoi hopes the unpublicized encounter may be a prelude to a quick lifting of the U.S. trade embargo.

Clinton Administration officials conducted their first high-level meeting with a Vietnamese diplomat Wednesday in what the Vietnamese hope may be a prelude to a quick lifting of the U.S. trade embargo against Hanoi.

In a session that was not publicly announced, Assistant Secretary of State William Clark and other U.S. officials met in Washington for talks with Trinh Xuan Lang, Vietnam’s outgoing ambassador to the United Nations. After The Times inquired about the secret meeting, the State Department confirmed that it had taken place, saying that Lang had come to Washington to pay “a farewell call.”

A Vietnamese official said that Winston Lord, who is awaiting confirmation as President Clinton’s assistant secretary of state for East Asia and the Pacific, was also taking part in the talks with the Vietnamese ambassador, but the State Department would not confirm this. Clark urged “that Vietnam continue its ongoing efforts to resolve all remaining issues” between Washington and Hanoi, the State Department said in a written statement.

Clinton Administration officials are believed to be trying to work out their policy toward Vietnam and a possible lifting of the longstanding U.S. trade embargo within the next six weeks. They are facing a deadline of late April, when the International Monetary Fund is scheduled to decide whether to take steps toward resuming a long-frozen lending program to Vietnam.

Western allies who in the past have supported American policy toward Hanoi, including Japan and France, are now breaking ranks and moving on their own to invest and trade in Vietnam. French President Francois Mitterrand recently visited Vietnam, and Japan recently welcomed a delegation of top Vietnamese officials to Tokyo.

The fear of American businesses is that if the United States does not lift its trade embargo soon, the IMF and World Bank will begin to lend money that Vietnam will be able to spend on contracts with European and Asian companies but not with U.S. firms.

In an interview Wednesday, Le Van Bang, Vietnam’s incoming U.N. ambassador who would like to become Hanoi’s first ambassador to the United States, acknowledged that Clinton may face some political liabilities in moving toward formal recognition of Vietnam: Clinton’s actions to avoid the military draft during the Vietnam War were an issue during the presidential campaign.

Nevertheless, Bang said: “In the campaign, the American people didn’t pay much attention to (Clinton’s) past. . . . They are looking to his future policies to lead America out of difficulties. That’s why he won the election. And we can fit into his policies. It is not a liability to work with Vietnam.”

Last fall, the George Bush Administration took several steps toward normalizing relations with Vietnam after receiving what U.S. officials considered to be unprecedented help from Hanoi in identifying Americans listed as missing in action since the war.

Bush cleared the way for U.S. companies to open offices in Vietnam and to enter into trade or investment deals that would take effect whenever the American embargo is lifted. On Tuesday, Pepsico Inc. signed such a contract for future work, committing itself to a $10-million soft-drink bottling operation in Vietnam.

However, while Bush Administration officials suggested that they might be prepared to lift the trade embargo, they left office without doing so. They said they were disappointed that Vietnam had not handed over more remains of American MIAs.

Since his election, Clinton has said he would not open the way for full normalization of ties with Vietnam until he is convinced Vietnam is doing all it can to account for missing Americans.

In the interview, Ambassador Bang said he is pleased that Clinton “has people around him who know Vietnam intimately, and who do not hate the Vietnamese like the Bush Administration.” He mentioned National Security Adviser Anthony Lake, who visited Vietnam in 1984, and Undersecretary of State-designate Peter Tarnoff, who visited last year.

Clinton has “people working for him who didn’t like the Vietnam War,” the ambassador said. Lake worked on the National Security Council during the Richard Nixon Administration but resigned to protest the U.S. invasion of Cambodia in 1970.