Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: WEDNESDAY, July 12, 1995 TAG: 9507120069
SECTION: NATL/INTL PAGE: A-1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: ANN DEVROY THE WASHINGTON POST
DATELINE: WASHINGTON LENGTH: Medium
In a simple nine-minute ceremony in the White House East Room, Clinton said the move will give a nation still divided over a war that ended two decades ago and took 58,000 American lives an opportunity to bind up national wounds that have ``resisted time for too long. We can now move on to common ground. Whatever divided us before, let us consign to the past.''
Despite that call to reconciliation, the divisions continued. The announcement was boycotted by the American Legion, the nation's largest veterans group, and by a major POW-MIA group. Senate Majority Leader Bob Dole, R-Kan., and others seeking the GOP presidential nomination harshly criticized the move, asserting Clinton had failed to achieve what he said as a candidate would be his only standard for granting recognition: full cooperation from Vietnam in accounting for all Americans missing in action.
``All signs point to Vietnam willfully withholding information which could resolve the fate of many Americans lost in the War,'' Dole said. But Clinton, touching on the most sensitive of issues from the war, disputed that.
Hanoi, he said, ``has taken important steps to help us resolve'' many cases, and full diplomatic relations would lead to further cooperation.
More than 2,200 Americans still are listed as missing from the war, and many of the families who want a full accounting for their servicemen say Clinton removed the principle inducement for Vietnam to cooperate.
The president briefed some of the family groups before the ceremony. Ann Mills Griffith, executive director of the National League of Families of American Prisoners and Missing in Southeast Asia, said the group disagrees with the decision and told Clinton that.
The ceremony inside the White House was a tableau of Clinton's generation and its response to the war. The president, who protested against the war at home and abroad and avoided military service, was flanked by politicians of his generation who served and were injured or held captive. As he spoke, Sen. John McCain, R-Ariz., one of the longest-held prisoners of war, and Sen. John Kerry, D-Mass., who served in Vietnam, stood behind him, along with other politician-veterans, including Sen. Charles Robb, D-Va.
After the ceremony, supporters of the move provided Clinton with some protection from a fullscale Republican assault. ``I support the president in what he did. I believe it required some courage,'' McCain said. He added that like Clinton, he believes most Americans ``would like to heal the wounds of this war and move forward and look forward to a brighter future than the rather bleak past.''
by CNB