http://story.news.yahoo.com/news?tmpl=story&u=/ap/20020426/ap_wo_en_ge/vietnam_kissinger_1
Fri Apr 26,10:05 AM ET - Associated Press
HANOI, Vietnam - Former U.S. Secretary of State Henry Kissinger should "bear responsibility" for the human suffering caused by the Vietnam War, Vietnam's government said Friday.
During a speech by Kissinger in London on Wednesday, dozens of protesters outside the meeting hall accused him of war crimes for his role in U.S. actions in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia during the war.
Kissinger ignored the protesters, but acknowledged in his speech that mistakes had "quite possibly" been made by administrations in which he served.
Asked to comment on the accusations, Vietnamese Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Phan Thuy Thanh noted that Kissinger had served as U.S. President Richard Nixon's national security adviser and secretary of state during the war.
"We hold that as a key official with an important role in the U.S. administration during the time the United States waged a war of aggression against Vietnam, Mr. Kissinger should bear responsibility for the losses and suffering caused by the war to the Vietnamese people," she said in a brief statement. She did not elaborate.
The war, which spilled over into neighboring Cambodia and Laos, ended with a communist victory in 1975 over the U.S.-backed government of South Vietnam. An estimated 3 million Vietnamese and more than 58,000 Americans perished in the conflict.
Thousands of other Vietnamese continue to be affected by poisonous defoliants used by U.S. forces during the war, and by accidental explosions of buried bombs and shells left over from the fighting