Clinton: Vietnam offers 'big welcome' to Americans

Clinton urged Vietnam to open its economy and allow greater individual freedoms. Despite Clinton's optimism, Vietnam's powerful Communist Party chief, Le Kha Phieu, expressed wariness about economic reforms and America's involvement in Vietnam.

Phieu emphatically stated that while the former Soviet Union has crumbled, the socialist system in Vietnam still stands, Clinton's economic adviser Gene Sperling said, recounting the talks Saturday in Hanoi.

"What was the cause of our resistance against foreign aggression," the Communist Party newspaper Nhan Dan quoted Phieu as telling Clinton. "The root cause was because imperalism colonized other countries."

In an interview with CNN, Clinton said he had "a nice little debate" with Phieu about the United States and "stoutly disputed that we were an imperialist country. We had never had any imperialist designs here."

Clinton said the trend toward freedom in Vietnam "is virtually irreversible ... And as you can see in the streets, there is a lot of goodwill toward America here."

The president flew back to a nation still uncertain whether it will be George W. Bush or Al Gore who takes Clinton's place on Jan. 20.

"I don't think we should have all this hand-wringing, dire predictions," Clinton said in the CNN interview broadcast on Sunday. "We've got a system that's under way and you know ... these guys, the advocates for either side, are under enormous pressure and, of course, they are being pretty snippy with each other from time to time."

Departing Ho Chi Minh City on Sunday, Air Force One was loaded with silks, purses, paintings, lacquer ware and other gifts purchased by the presidential entourage on a 22,192-mile, weeklong trip to an Asian summit in Brunei and the groundbreaking stop in Vietnam. Clinton's plane was stopping in Alaska to refuel, with a scheduled arrival in Washington before dawn Monday.

"I am going home determined to continue the partnership we have for a better future for the people of Vietnam, the people of the United States and all those whom we can reach together," Clinton told a group of business leaders just before his departure.

Clinton was the first president to visit this country since 1969 and the first ever to stop in Hanoi. While he spoke hopefully of the future, there were reminders of the painful past.

During his stay he visited an excavation site near Hanoi, where searchers probed the mud for the remains of a U.S. pilot shot down 33 years ago. He met with children disfigured by forgotten land mines. And he watched silently as the remains of three MIAs began the journey home.

In a gesture for religious freedom, Clinton met Sunday with Jean-Baptiste Pham Minh Man, the Roman Catholic archbishop of Ho Chi Minh City. White House officials said they spoke of problems the archbishop faces in a country where international human rights groups and the State Department cite a pattern of harassment and imprisonment of Buddhist and other religious leaders.

Earlier Sunday, he plunged into crowds in a narrow shopping street, shaking hands and stopping at open-front markets to buy last-minute gifts. To a generation of American GIs, this bustling city of 5 million people was known as Saigon before its surrender to communist forces in America's most humiliating military defeat.

Ho Chi Minh City is the commercial hub of Vietnam. Clinton visited a container port on the Saigon River and assured Vietnam that it will benefit by embracing the global economy.<