Clinton Recognizes Vietnam to ‘Help Extend Reach of Freedom’ : Diplomacy: President puts a formal end to the only war the U.S. ever lost. Some veterans and MIA groups denounce the decision, and Dole calls it a ‘moral mistake.’

Putting a formal end to the only war the United States ever lost, President Clinton extended diplomatic recognition Tuesday to the Communist government of Vietnam and said he hopes the move will help its people achieve the freedom for which American troops once fought.

In a somber White House ceremony, Clinton paid tribute to the U.S. war effort of two decades ago and vowed to continue pressing the Hanoi regime for information about the more than 2,200 Americans still formally listed as missing in action in Southeast Asia.

“Whatever we may think about the political decisions of the Vietnam era, the brave Americans who fought and died there had noble motives,” said Clinton, who as a college student opposed the war and avoided military service. “They fought for the freedom and the independence of the Vietnamese people. . . . We believe this step will help to extend the reach of freedom in Vietnam.”

Around the President, in a deliberate tableau intended to show broad support for the move, were six members of Congress who fought in Vietnam, 12 retired military officers from the war and all six current members of the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

“This moment offers us the opportunity to bind up our own wounds,” Clinton said. “They have resisted time for too long. . . . Whatever divided us before, let us consign to the past.”

Vietnamese Prime Minister Vo Van Kiet today pledged to continue efforts to give a full accounting of Americans missing from the war.

“These relations will serve the interests of the two peoples and contribute to the cause of peace and stability in the region and the world,” he said.

But the divisions opened by the long, debilitating war of a generation ago would not close so easily. Two veterans organizations and the largest group representing families of Vietnam MIAs denounced Clinton’s decision, and members of the groups abruptly refused to attend the White House ceremony, although they were on the guest list.

And Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.), who is running for President, criticized the announcement as “a strategic, diplomatic and moral mistake.”

Beneath the disagreement over policy, many of the President’s critics harbor an abiding hurt--a feeling, not always suppressed, that Clinton is the wrong man to grant final peace to a foe he refused to fight.

It is an all-too-raw echo of the passions that divided the country during the war, when those who supported the conflict and those who opposed it routinely accused each other of immorality and cowardice.

“This is an issue of national honor, and the President has today dishonored the families and veterans who sacrificed in Vietnam,” said Sen. Robert C. Smith (R-N.H.), one of the strongest opponents of Tuesday’s action.

Clinton and his aides said they decided to extend recognition--which will give the two countries a normal government-to-government relationship for the first time since the founding of the modern Vietnamese state--because the Hanoi regime has cooperated with U.S. efforts to determine the fate and recover the remains of as many MIAs as possible.

“Our strategy is working. Normalization of relations is the next appropriate step. With this new relationship, we will be able to make more progress,” the President said. “ . . . Vietnam has pledged [that] it will continue to help us find answers. We will hold them to that pledge.”

His critics disagreed.

“The President talks about a sense of progress that I don’t really think has been accomplished,” said Colleen Shire, a spokeswoman for the National League of Families of POWs and MIAs in Southeast Asia--and one of those invited who boycotted the ceremony. “There is a core of cases on which the Vietnamese government has not yet made a good-faith effort.”

To try to stanch those emotions, the White House assembled a long list of veterans with unimpeachable combat credentials to stand up for Clinton’s decision. Chief among them was Sen. John McCain (R-Ariz.), a former Navy pilot who spent five years as a prisoner of war in North Vietnam and who agrees with Clinton on very few issues--except this one.

“This was an act that required some courage from the President,” McCain told reporters on the White House lawn. “I’m convinced that we will now receive further cooperation from the Vietnamese on MIAs.

“Most Americans favor this,” he said. “They want to heal the wounds. I think this is going to be about a 48-hour story.”

When McCain stepped onto the stage in the White House’s East Room on Tuesday, Clinton aides carefully placed him right behind the President--so every television picture included the image of the Arizona conservative along with Clinton.

And in an unusual effort to demonstrate military support for the civilian leadership’s decision, National Security Adviser Anthony Lake said that the Joint Chiefs were polled individually on the issue. “They were unanimous . . . in their support,” Lake said.

Lake said Clinton made his final decision to extend recognition to Hanoi only last weekend. But in fact--as the national security adviser acknowledged--both Clinton Administration officials and their predecessors under President George Bush had long accepted the principle of normalizing ties with Vietnam; the only question was one of time.

In 1991, the Bush Administration gave Hanoi a list of conditions for normalizing relations. They included Vietnamese cooperation with U.N. efforts to bring peace to neighboring Cambodia, something Hanoi was already about to do. But chief among the U.S. conditions was Vietnamese help in the search for MIAs, the most painful issue remaining from the war.

In practical terms, normalization will not mean much. The real impact will be symbolic--but that might have strategic impact on Southeast Asia’s still-unsettled problems.

Clinton said Secretary of State Warren Christopher will go to Hanoi next month. He will be the first secretary of state to go to Vietnam since William Rogers visited Saigon during the war and the first ever to visit the northern capital.

Christopher will sign formal documents establishing relations.

Then the two countries will open embassies and name ambassadors.

Those procedural actions will give Clinton’s critics another chance to debate the issue, because the Senate must confirm his choice as a U.S. ambassador to Hanoi. Some conservatives, including Rep. Robert K. Dornan (R-Garden Grove), have said they will also seek to prohibit the State Department from spending any money to open and staff an embassy.

More on Vietnam

* CELEBRATION ABROAD-- Americans in Hanoi raise a toast to Clinton’s move. A6

* OPPOSING VOICES--It’s too soon for ties, say veterans and families of MIAs in Southeast Asia. A7

* BOOST FOR COMMERCE--New relations are a shot of confidence for U.S. business in Vietnam. D1

* MORE GRAPHICS, PHOTOS: A6-8