AMERICA AND VIETNAM: A NEW ERA : To Angry Minority, Vietnam Is Still a Foe : Opposition: Outrage is concentrated in the GOP-controlled Congress. Lawmakers vow to make things hard for Clinton.

President Clinton’s decision to extend diplomatic recognition to Vietnam fanned into flame passions that have smoldered for two decades--the outraged opposition of families of personnel still missing in Southeast Asia, of many veterans and of their supporters on Capitol Hill.

“The timing is wrong, the people are wrong,” said Rep. Sam Johnson (R-Tex.), a decorated veteran who spent almost eight years as a prisoner of war in Vietnam. “It’s still a Communist nation. It’s still run by a few people.”

Like the war that ended 20 years ago, Clinton’s action has produced deep divisions in public opinion. Recent polls indicate that a majority of Americans are ready for normal relations with Hanoi. At the same time, for a vehement minority Vietnam remains the enemy--a country with a brutal and unresponsive government that does not deserve U.S. recognition.

Although organizations of families of military personnel still listed as missing in action and the country’s largest veterans organization, the 3-million-member American Legion, strongly oppose recognition, much of the opposition is concentrated in the Republican-controlled Congress. Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole (R-Kan.) and the chairmen of the foreign relations committees of the Senate and House all vowed to reverse the President’s action.

As a practical matter, Congress cannot overturn Clinton’s decision directly. Unlike treaties, decisions to grant diplomatic recognition do not require congressional ratification. But Congress can still make it very difficult for the Administration to establish normal relations with Vietnam.

Dole, Sen. Robert C. Smith (R-N.H.) and Rep. Benjamin A. Gilman (R-N.Y.), the chairman of the House International Relations Committee, introduced legislation to prohibit the government from spending any money to open an embassy in Hanoi. Sen. Jesse Helms (R-N.C.), the chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, also warned that an ambassador to Vietnam will face “a tough road to confirmation.”

With lawmakers lining up on both sides of the issue, it is far from certain that the Gilman or Dole-Smith bills would pass. But Helms, as chairman of the committee that must pass on all diplomatic appointments, has the power to prevent Clinton from sending an ambassador to Hanoi.

Further, Dole said, “any further improvement in relations will require action by Congress--granting of most-favored-nation [trade] status or beginning any operations by the Export-Import Bank, the Overseas Private Investment Corp. or the Trade and Development Agency.” He made it clear that such steps will meet tough scrutiny.

Most opponents linked their position to Vietnam’s failure to account for the more than 2,200 Americans still formally listed as missing in action in Indochina. They accused Vietnam of giving the United States the runaround in efforts to resolve MIA cases.

But the opposition goes far deeper than that, with most critics arguing that the Vietnamese government, as Helms put it, “remains an unrepentant Communist dictatorship.”

And some of the opposition was directed at Clinton, who avoided the draft and is the first President since World War II who never served in the nation’s military.

Rejecting the President’s contention that diplomatic recognition will close the books on the divisions caused by the war, Rep. Robert K. Dornan (R-Garden Grove), said: “Clinton hasn’t healed the wounds. He’s ripped off every last scab and he’s stuck his hand in the wounds and gouged around.”

Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (R-Huntington Beach) argued that the force behind Clinton’s decision was business people who want access to Vietnam’s growing market. “This is a horrendous motive for moving forward with relations with this dictatorship that still has not given us a full accounting of our POWs or respected the rights of their own people,” he said.

Although most opposition centered on the war and its aftermath, Francis Loewenheim, a history professor at Rice University in Houston and a former State Department official, said that U.S. recognition of Vietnam violates a policy that has been in place since before World War II of refusing to recognize changes in international borders resulting from military force. He said that Clinton’s action puts the final seal on North Vietnam’s seizure and annexation of South Vietnam.

“Clinton’s decision is completely wrong and comes at a wrong time,” former South Vietnamese President Nguyen Van Thieu, who now lives in Southern California, agreed in an interview on Little Saigon Radio.

Times staff writers Gebe Martinez in Washington and Jodi Wilgoren in Orange County contributed to this report.