Around the World

Clinton keeps quiet on war in Vietnam

BANDAR SERI BEGAWAN, Brunei - President Clinton has no intention of apologizing in Vietnam for the war he bitterly opposed, with his ambassador to Hanoi saying the United States has already transformed relations with its onetime enemy "from pretty awful to pretty good."

"I don't necessarily think anyone is looking for an apology," Ambassador Pete Peterson said yesterday on the eve of Clinton's visit to Vietnam, the first by a U.S. president since the fall of Saigon and the communist takeover in 1975.

Clinton's anti-war youth probably is well known in Vietnam, Peterson said, but "it's never mentioned to me and I doubt seriously if there will be any reference to it at all during his visit."

Not officially, but Clinton's personal history as a war protestor and in avoiding the Vietnam draft are an unavoidable backdrop to his historic visit. He is the third president to go to Vietnam - the first ever to Hanoi and the first to a unified Vietnam. Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon made swift, undisclosed visits to what was then a war zone to rally American troops.

Southern ships scare North Korea

SEOUL, South Korea - North Korea accused South Korea of committing a "serious military provocation" by sending ships into its waters Tuesday. Although South Korean officials denied any incursion, the incident could cast a pall over the fledgling rapprochement between the two nations.

Through its state news agency, North Korea warned that its army was "highly alerted" and that "South Korean military authorities will be wholly responsible for the consequences to be entailed by the military provocations in the Yellow Sea."

There had been high hopes for eventual peace on the peninsula after a June summit at which the nations' leaders agreed to take steps toward reuniA honeymoon period ensued, but in recent weeks, relations have grown more acrimonious. The North has twice postponed planned reunions of families separated by the Korean War 50 years ago. While the South has started working on an agreed-upon railway through the heavily mined demilitarized zone between the two countries, a recent meeting between North and South Korean defense ministers failed to yield a plan on how exactly the project would proceed.

Moreover, domestic political tensions in the South have been mounting amid charges that Seoul is giving too much aid and too many concessions to the North in return for too little.

Parliament was brought to a standstill yesterday after an opposition lawmaker a day earlier branded the South Korean ruling party a subsidiary of the North's ruling Korean Workers' Party. The South's Millennium Democratic Party demanded that lawmaker Kim Yong Kap be reprimanded, but leaders of both parties involved failed to agree on further action, thus delaying a bill allocating public funds to bail out ailing financial institutions.

The latest naval incident took place near the heavily fortified South Korean island of Paekryong, an area where a bloody naval shootout occurred in June 1999.

According to the North's official Korean Central News Agency, four South Korean naval ships sailing among fishing boats intruded "deep into the territorial waters of the North" about 8:30 a.m. Tuesday.

As a North Korean patrol boat sailed to the waters, "the warships got ready for action after leaving the fishing boats behind," the report said. "Three South Korean naval warships left Paekryong islet for the territorial waters of the North to join those warships, as if they had been waiting for the chance."

"Scared by the prompt sailing of the (North's) naval patrol boat, those warships fled southward in a flurry," the agency said, noting that similar "intrusions" had occurred on three previous occasions this month.

"All these grave military provocations committed against the North cannot be construed otherwise than deliberate and premeditated maneuvers of the South Korean military authorities to stop the situation from turning favorable," the report said. "The navy of the Korean People's Army is highly alerted and keeps itself fully ready for action to cope with the situation."