McCain to visit Vietnam for war-end anniversary

0 Comments | Asian Political News, April 17, 2000

HANOI, April 10 Kyodo

Sen. John McCain, a former Vietnam-era POW whose bid to seek the U.S. presidency foundered earlier this year, is planning to visit Vietnam this month when the country celebrates the 25th anniversary of the end of the Vietnam War, an official newspaper reported Monday.

The visit comes within the framework of a U.S. national television program, the ''Today Show,'' which is to tape a show April 28 from Ho Chi Minh City, Tien Phong, a semiweekly magazine of the Vietnamese communist youth league, said.

Formerly Saigon, Ho Chi Minh City was the capital of U.S.-backed South Vietnam.

During the visit, his seventh to Vietnam, McCain also plans to visit a Hanoi lake where he was taken prisoner in 1967, and a Hanoi prison where he was held for five years, the newspaper said.

McCain was shot down over Hanoi while piloting a navy jet fighter during a bombing mission against communist-ruled North Vietnam. He was held in a prison nicknamed the ''Hanoi Hilton'' by inmates.

Current Vietnamese leaders have shown a high appreciation of McCain for his strong lobbying in the Senate and elsewhere for normalization of diplomatic relations between the United States and Vietnam in 1995.

But Hanoi also voiced displeasure over ''ill-willed'' words spoken during the recent Republican presidential primary campaign when McCain described Vietnam's treatment of him while in prison.