WASHINGTON -- When the government of Vietnam opened its first diplomatic office here last week, the chief of liaison was met with angry shouts from protesters. In the days that followed, however, the downtown suite of offices has filled up with flowers from U.S. companies eager to do business with the former foe.
As Vietnam and the United States move gingerly toward full diplomatic ties, the strains of the past and the hopes for the future overlap awkwardly.
Le Van Bang, the chief of the new, six-person liaison office, describes his role as helping to tell America of how Vietnam has moved on since the Communists emerged victorious and unified the country nearly 20 years ago. As he shows a visitor around the largely empty downtown suite of offices, decorated with tapestries of pagodas and the orange-and-yellow Vietnamese flag, he stopped to read cards from some of the floral tributes.
"All these flowers are from American companies," said Mr. Bang. "For instance, this one is from a company that clears mines from the ground."
Hanoi's representative to the United Nations for the past three years, Mr. Bang said that 80 percent of his time was spent trying to smooth relations between the United States and Vietnam. During those years, he traveled around the United States, meeting with Vietnamese-Americans, American business people and veterans' groups to promote the image of a new Vietnam.
"I tell people about the new foreign policy to be friends with
everyone," said Mr. Bang. "Many are surprised when I tell them we are now a free market economy, that we encourage private ownership."
It is also his job to help resolve the issue of Americans still missing in Vietnam.
State Department officials say that lack of progress on the issue of American soldiers still listed as missing in action and other Americans unaccounted for is the main stumbling block on the road to full diplomatic relations.
On Friday, a State Department official said that while the United States is heartened by Vietnam's increased cooperation, returning 61 sets of remains of Americans over the past year, "the remains of 2,100 servicemen are still missing, and further steps towards diplomatic normalization will not continue unless there is tangible progress."
Mr. Bang also tries to help Americans caught in Vietnam's red tape. One of the first phone calls he received in his new post was from a representative of the Vietnam Veterans of America, who was calling because he was having a problem securing visas for a delegation to visit Vietnam.
Mr. Bang is swift to describe the warm relations he enjoys with groups like the Vietnam Veterans of America. But Paul Skogland, the executive director of Vietnam Veterans of America, stopped short of calling the increased diplomatic relations a positive development. "Once something's a done deal," he said, "we try to make the best of it."