Vietnam's end of war commemorations to be muted

HO CHI MINH CITY - Vietnam commemorates 30 years since "The American War" ended on Saturday, no longer simply exulting in the victory but instead urging people to look to the future.

Concerned that too visible a show of triumph could harm ties with the United States, the celebrations have been toned down compared with previous years.

There will be fireworks aplenty and ceremonies in what was once Saigon to mark the time the war ended - 11 a.m. on April 30, 1975. The city was renamed Ho Chi Minh City the next year.

More than 7,500 prisoners, including some from the wartime era, have been released this year as part of an anniversary amnesty.

But the only military parade is outside the palace where the US-backed Saigon administration made its last stand.

US troops, who at their peak in the late 1960s had numbered 500,000, had left Vietnam two years earlier. More than 58,000 US troops and up to two million Vietnamese died in the war.

The US casualties far surpass the dead in all other wars in which the United States has been involved since 1975.

The only high profile foreign visitor will be Cuban First Vice-President General Raul Castro Ruz, the communist nation's defence minister and regarded as Fidel Castro's heir apparent.

Cuba, along with the Soviet Union and China, were communist North Vietnam's key allies in the war with the United States.

Summing up the mood of restraint and reconciliation, former Vietnamese Prime Minister Vo Van Kiet told the latest issue of the Foreign Minstry's International Affairs Review newspaper that he wished the war would finally recede into the past.

"The way we have been commemorating these historical dates is getting repetitive and overdosing on them may have a counter-effect," he wrote.

"We have to push ahead with reforms and stay away from self-satisfaction and the disease of talking too much about our achievements," said Kiet, prime minister in the mid-1990's.

"The world has moved far forward and we have to rush to catch up, not just sing praises of the past. "

In an interview with foreign reporters earlier this month ahead of the anniversary, US ambassador to Vietnam Michael Marine also downplayed the importance of Saturday's date.

"Obviously an anniversary like the 30th is going to attract attention. But in the grand scheme of things, I don't consider it particularly important in terms of the (US-Vietnam) relation. "

"The relation has been growing steadily, if not even dramatically, over the past 10 years (since diplomatic ties were established) on a whole wide range of fronts," Marine added.

Looming ahead for Vietnam in the next year are dates of far greater significance for its future than Saturday's celebrations.

Negotiations are under way for a historic visit this June to the White House by a Vietnamese leader; possible entry into the World Trade Organisation by the end of this year; hosting of a summit next year in Hanoi of Apec, which includes the United States and its wartime allies like Australia and South Korea.

Many of the scars of war have long been covered by Vietnam's surging economic growth, which is second only to China in the world, averaging an 7.5 per cent per year since 2000.

But there are still many reminders of the brutal past.

Aid groups say since the start of 2005 there have been at least 28 accidents involving left over weapons like land mines, which killed five people and injured 30 including 24 children.

American Christos Cotsakos, who enlisted in 1967 and served with the 101st Airborne Division which was involved in much of the fighting in Vietnam, is among a group of war veterans who have returned to battlefields on which they once fought to help in de-mining efforts.

"Three of my friends were killed here, so I think of them," he told Reuters in northern Quang Tri province on what was once the border between North and South Vietnam. "It's painful in one aspect and happy in another to somehow be with them again. "

Asked if the Vietnam War accomplished anything, Cotsakos replied: "Well, I'll leave that for the politicians to decide. I was just a soldier."

- REUTERS