GOVERNMENT: LOCAL VETS SAY CLINTON SHOULDN'T BE IN VIETNAM

Local Vietnam War veterans welcome the news that an American president is visiting Hanoi for the first time since the war ended 25 years ago but are upset that the emissary is Bill Clinton.

Clinton opened a historic visit Friday to Vietnam, welcomed with a red-carpet ceremony near the mausoleum of the legendary Ho Chi Minh, architect of the communist victory over U.S.-backed forces in the war that ended 25 years ago.

"I don't mind normalization of relations," said Cape Girardeau Vietnam War vet Ron McCubbin, adding that it happens eventually after every war. "I would like to see a full accounting of POWs and MIAs. The only way we're going to get that is if we normalize relations."

The U.S. lists 1,992 Americans unaccounted for from the war. The Pentagon has stopped pursuing 646 of the cases, and the rest remain open.

During the Clinton visit, more than 50 U.S. corporations have sent executives to Vietnam, an untapped market of 78 million people.

As a young man, Clinton "opposed and despised" the Vietnam War, organized protest marches and avoided the military draft. He has no business in Vietnam, McCubbin said.

"He didn't have guts enough to go himself. And ever since he got into office he has done nothing but put our young people in danger."

The war cost 58,000 American lives and tore the nation with suffering and turmoil.

Vietnam vet Ian Sutherland said he applauds Clinton's efforts as president of the United States but wishes a different president had gone.

"You couldn't get him there when the country was involved in a war, and now he's over there trying to make peace," Sutherland said.. "I think we need another emissary."

Sutherland, who spent 42 months in Vietnam during the war, remains wary of the country's communist leadership but said he loves the people and the country.

"Would I go back again as a tourist? No," he said. "Would I go back to walk the areas where I was? I would do that in a heartbeat."

Vietnam vet Burt Lehman is angry that Clinton is the first president to go to Vietnam since the war. "It grinds my teeth to know he's there," Lehman said. "It seems like he's in a huddle with them, and they're laughing and talking and saying this should have been done a long time ago. It leaves too much to the imagination."

Lehman called the Clinton visit "a personal slap in the face to the Vietnam vets."

He does want to see relations between the two countries improve, although he believes any MIAs or POWs who may have remained "are probably gone now."

Lehman said he has no ill feelings toward the Vietnamese people, the majority of whom now are too young to remember the war. He doesn't spend a lot of time thinking about it either.

"I'll always be a veteran and I'll always remember experiences in Vietnam and the friends I lost," he said. "But I can't really hold a grudge against those people."

He thinks Vietnam would be a nice place to visit. "You wouldn't want to get off the roads though," he said. "You might step on something."

Crowds of curious onlookers, some of them waving, stood three and four deep on the streets as Clinton's motorcade headed for the French-built presidential palace on Ba Dinh Square. The palace is a stone's throw from the grey stone building where Vietnamese line up each day to pay respects to the late leader known they know as Uncle Ho.

A military band played the national anthems of the United States and Vietnam as Clinton and President Tran Duc Luong stood under a canopied platform in the warm morning sun. An honor guard of military troops stood at attention.

On a visit stirring painful memories back home of America's long and most unpopular war, Clinton promised "to build a different future" with its former enemy.

Clinton arrived in the communist capital late Thursday, the first U.S. president ever in Hanoi, a city once bombed by American warplanes. Thousands and thousands of Vietnamese were on the streets at midnight for a glimpse of Clinton's limousine and jammed the square in front of his hotel.

He was to be formally welcomed today by President Tran Duc Luong. Reaching out to a generation of students born after the war, Clinton will speak at Hanoi National University to describe his vision for a new chapter in U.S.-Vietnamese relations.

Staff writer Sam Blackwell contributed to this report.