The story of General Le Duc Anh convincing Mr. John Kerry

After a while, the US side automatically removed the POW issue in bilateral contacts and exchanges. Gradually, within the US, many politicians also recognized Vietnam's goodwill, and they fought with the US Government to quickly normalize relations with Vietnam.

When assigned the great responsibility of carrying out the diplomatic mission - conducting exploration to normalize Vietnam-US relations, after exploring with science and technology, the next policy that General Le Duc Anh put forth was to actively and willingly cooperate with the US side to resolve the POW/MIA issue.

After we “opened the door to exploration” from the direction of “Orthopedic Surgery Science” and invited the first Americans to Vietnam, the doctors in the “Smile Surgery” team, at the suggestion of General Le Duc Anh, the Central Committee decided to appoint Mr. Nguyen Huy Phan as Chairman of the Vietnam-US Friendship Association to act as a “bridge” for communication. The guiding spirit of the Politburo at that time was that in contact and relations, we must not let the US be offended by being a big country that is inferior to us, while we still maintain the spirit of national independence.

The diplomatic struggle for the US to lift the embargo and establish friendly relations with Vietnam was a long process of many years, spanning three US presidential terms (from the last years of Reagan's term, to George Bush's term (Bush Sr.), and to near the end of Bin Clinton's term to complete).

After the successful breakthrough through science, the next step is to facilitate the US side to return to Vietnam to find Americans missing in the war. Learning about the US, General Le Duc Anh found that Americans missing while fighting in Vietnam is a very serious problem for the US Government. Because according to US law, when an American soldier goes missing on the battlefield for unknown reasons, the US Government still has to pay their monthly salary and when the term is up, they still have to promote their ranks, until they know where and how the soldier died, then the regime for their relatives will be resolved.

US President Bill Clinton and his wife welcomed Vietnamese President Le Duc Anh and his wife in the US in 1995.

Since the late 1970s, right after the war ended, they sent people to Vietnam to discuss the issue with us to resolve this issue. In the 1980s, they continued to come and especially since 1987, the contacts became faster, more continuous and more intense. If before, they came mostly as individuals or non-governmental organizations; then after we had "opened the channel" of exchanges on medical science, they began to organize "Delegations" to Vietnam. For example: Delegation of Republican Senators; Delegation of former Democratic Senators; Delegation of American businessmen; The Christian delegation, etc., took place in the first half of 1987. Then, from August 1987, the last months of President Reagan's term and the first months of President Bush's term, General John Vessey (former Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff) was appointed as special envoy to lead the delegation to visit Vietnam.

In the early period, they insisted on two demands: One was to implement a political solution in Cambodia; two was to resolve the issue of Americans missing in action during the Vietnam War (POM/MIA issue); they considered these two issues as prerequisites to lifting the embargo and normalizing Vietnam-US relations. Resolving the missing Americans included two contents: One was to identify and search for American prisoners of war still being held by the Vietnamese side (abbreviated as POM). Two was to find the remains of Americans who died in action (abbreviated as MIA).

After 4 visits and dialogues with the Vietnamese side by General John Vessey, the US raised the level to a higher level by sending Senator John Kerry, the US Senate Foreign Relations Committee, directly as Chairman of the Special Committee on POM/MIA issues, to lead the delegation to Vietnam.

The Cambodian issue has two factors: First, in fact, with the "Cambodia card", both the US and China failed. But when it came to the political solution, we and Cambodia had a policy of making concessions on some points to avoid hurting the pride of the big countries, most clearly we agreed to establish a "Three-faction Government", agreed to free elections under the supervision of the United Nations. Second, when it came to the stage of having the above-mentioned political solution, Cambodia's socio-economy had revived, the political system of the country was stable, Vietnam had withdrawn all volunteer troops and expert groups. Therefore, the US, China and other countries no longer had any reason to say that Vietnam had no goodwill; the US and China no longer had any right to stand up for the Pol Pot genocide, so the US had to voluntarily remove the "Cambodia issue" from the "precondition" for normalizing relations between the two countries.

The remaining “prerequisite” is the POM/MIA issue. There was an event that made John Kerry very sympathetic to Vietnam and after returning home, he urged the US Government to quickly normalize relations with Vietnam. At that time, the US Government was still skeptical, coupled with the attacks of some former generals of the “Republic of Vietnam” living in the US, who said: “Vietnam is still detaining some US officers in Hoang Dieu citadel”. On November 18, 1992, General and President Le Duc Anh received a delegation of US Congressmen led by Mr. John Kerry. Mr. John handed General Anh a letter from President George Bush, in which he highly appreciated the cooperation of the Vietnamese Government and people in the past time, expressed the wish that both sides would strengthen cooperation in the coming time and committed that the US Government would promote the process of normalizing relations between the two countries.

General and President Le Duc Anh reaffirmed Vietnam's consistent policy of considering the issue of missing Americans a purely humanitarian issue; Vietnam will continue to actively cooperate with the United States to resolve this issue soon. When Mr. John Kerry expressed his wish to visit the Hanoi Citadel (which is currently the headquarters of the Vietnamese Ministry of National Defense) and the underground works under President Ho Chi Minh's Mausoleum, President Le Duc Anh agreed and invited Mr. John and Senator Bob Smith to visit and inspect these two places.

Mr. John Kerry was truly convinced by the extremely cultural and humane behavior of President Le Duc Anh.

After returning to the US from Vietnam, Mr. John Kerry declared: "The normalization roadmap with Vietnam that the US Government has outlined is not a good policy"; He definitely disagreed with linking the Cambodian issue to the normalization process of Vietnam - US relations. He affirmed that the news that three pilots were being held alive and that the remains were just fabrications with bad intentions, to shake US public opinion and sabotage and prevent the normalization process between the two countries. After a while, the US side automatically removed the POW issue in bilateral contacts and exchanges. Gradually, within the US, many politicians also recognized Vietnam's goodwill, and they fought with the US Government to quickly normalize with Vietnam.

Colonel Khuat Bien Hoa - Former secretary of General Le Duc Anh

(According to VNN)