"The progress between Vietnam and the United States has been breathtaking," US Secretary of State Hillary Clinton on said Sept. 29 as she talked about joint search efforts between the two countries for the remains of missing American soldiers.
At a conference on the American experience in Southeast Asia between 1946-1975 held at the U.S. State Department on Sept. 29-30, Secretary Clinton recalled the search for the remains of a US pilot who had crashed 33 years before, which was carried out during her first visit to Vietnam .
She said that officials of the two countries "painstakingly excavated the fragments of [Lieutenant Colonel Lawrence Evert]’s F-105 fighter plane and the tatters of his uniform.
"The Vietnamese Government had sent engineers to help, villagers had come forward with artifacts and information, and eventually the Everts were able to take their father home," Clinton added.
The U.S. top diplomat highlighted the "unprecedented cooperation" between the two countries and their peoples for many families like the Everts in both countries being able to find some measure of peace.
She said: "An entire generation of young people has grown up knowing only peace between Vietnam and America, and the relationships that they are forming through educational and cultural exchanges, through new businesses and social networks are drawing us even closer together."
Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and Ambassador Richard Holbrooke and Ambassador John Negroponte also addressed the two-day conference, which provides further analysis of documentary histories compiled by the Office of the Historian in the Foreign Relations of the United States. The work comprises 26 volumes with over 24,500 pages of policy related documents, including official documents, many thousands of messages, memoranda, intelligence reports, military assessments, and transcripts of meetings and telephone conversations among key policymakers./.
At a conference on the American experience in Southeast Asia between 1946-1975 held at the U.S. State Department on Sept. 29-30, Secretary Clinton recalled the search for the remains of a US pilot who had crashed 33 years before, which was carried out during her first visit to Vietnam .
She said that officials of the two countries "painstakingly excavated the fragments of [Lieutenant Colonel Lawrence Evert]’s F-105 fighter plane and the tatters of his uniform.
"The Vietnamese Government had sent engineers to help, villagers had come forward with artifacts and information, and eventually the Everts were able to take their father home," Clinton added.
The U.S. top diplomat highlighted the "unprecedented cooperation" between the two countries and their peoples for many families like the Everts in both countries being able to find some measure of peace.
She said: "An entire generation of young people has grown up knowing only peace between Vietnam and America, and the relationships that they are forming through educational and cultural exchanges, through new businesses and social networks are drawing us even closer together."
Former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger and Ambassador Richard Holbrooke and Ambassador John Negroponte also addressed the two-day conference, which provides further analysis of documentary histories compiled by the Office of the Historian in the Foreign Relations of the United States. The work comprises 26 volumes with over 24,500 pages of policy related documents, including official documents, many thousands of messages, memoranda, intelligence reports, military assessments, and transcripts of meetings and telephone conversations among key policymakers./.
