The MacNeil/Lehrer NewsHour

[Opening music] [Jim Lehrer] Good evening. The leading headlines this Monday are these: President Reagan said going to the German War Cemetery was morally right. Eight million dollars was taken in an armored car company robbery in New York City. The Space Shuttle Challenger is off on the largest research mission ever in space. And six people are dead in new violence in South Africa. Robert MacNeil is away tonight. Charlayne Hunter-Gault is in New York. Charlayne? [Charlayne Hunter-Gault] Our NewsHour tonight goes like this: a news summary and four focus sections starting with the debate on U.S. policy towards South Africa, then on to the growing controversy over whether or not American investors should withdraw their funds from companies doing business with South Africa. We have a documentary report on the problems facing Vietnam as it

marks the 10th anniversary of the end of U.S. involvement in its conflicts. And we get some foreign perspectives on President Reagan's trip to the Bitburg Cemetery from three foreign correspondents. [Music sting] [Voice-over] The MacNeil-Lehrer NewsHour is funded by AT&T, the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and this station and other public television stations. [Lehrer] President Reagan today defended his plan trip to the German War Cemetery as morally right and said White House polls indicate it is not that major a concern for most Americans. Mr. Reagan leaves tomorrow for the economic summit in Bonn, West Germany. He is to visit the Cemetery at Bitburg next Sunday. A majority of both the House and Senate have asked him to cancel the Bitburg stop because 47 SS men are among the 2,000 German soldiers buried there. Mr. Reagan spoke of the controversy to reporters from the six summit countries

in interview this afternoon from the State Dining Room at the White House. [Reagan] I think it is morally right to do what I am doing, and I am not going to change my mind about that. I don't believe it actually has affected the majority of the people here, and matter of fact some of our own people have done polls and surveys and reveal that this is not of that great a concern. I can understand how some of the people feel, because very frankly, I don't believe that many of your American colleagues, in that sense I mean in the press, have been quite fair about this. I think they have gotten a hold of something and like a dog worrying a bone, they are going to keep on chewing on it. Shouldn't we look at this and recognize that the unusual thing that has happened, that in these 40 years since the end of that war, the end of that tragedy of the Holocaust, we have become the

friends that we are. [Lehrer] Mr. Reagan also told the Foreign Reporters that despite congressional opposition, he had not changed his mind about the need for aid to the Contra Guerrillas in Nicaragua. [Reagan] The vote up there in the debate, whether they admitted it or not, is simply do they want another totalitarian Marxist-Leninist government, like Cuba's, now on the mainland of the Americas, or do they want the people of Nicaragua to have the democracy that they are willing to fight for, and that they did fight for in overthrowing the Somoza dictatorship? And whatever they-- way they may want to frame it, the opponents in the Congress of ours who have opposed our trying to continue helping those people, they really are voting to have a totalitarian Marxist-Leninist government here in the Americas, and there is no way for them to disguise it. So we are not going to give up.

[Lehrer] We will have a longer excerpt in that interview later in the program tonight, plus the reactions of three of the six interviewers. Charlayne? [Hunter-Gault] Here in New York, police are investigating a robbery, said to be the second largest cash robbery in U.S. history. Early this morning, four masked men broke into a Wells Fargo depot, ambushed four guards when they reported for duty, and escaped with $8 million, according to police. Police said the men, who left behind some $12 million, apparently acted with inside information. None of the alarms in the building were tripped and there were no guards on duty last night. The robbers drove away in a Wells Fargo truck, which was found empty and abandoned under the Brooklyn Bridge about two hours later. The FBI questioned the four guards and said they provided some encouraging leads about the identity of the robbers. [Reporter] Did they give you a lead? The four men you've questioned upstairs. [FBI Agent] Just the description of the individual, bearing in mind, they had ski masks on. One had a turtleneck pulled

up over his face. [Reporter 2] It sounds like you're very close to them. [FBI Agent] No, we're not all that close, but as these things go, we're very encouraged by what we have so far. [Reporter 2] Does that mean you expect an apprehension today? [FBI Agent] No, I wouldn't say we'd have an apprehension today. These things take a while. They take time. And with the information we got and the way we're proceeding, I'm confident that we're going to be successful at it. [Hunter-Gault] Wells Fargo transports money for clients and stores the cash in the terminal vault over the weekend until the banks open on Monday. The security service is not related to the Wells Fargo Bank of San Francisco, the nation's 10th largest bank. [Lehrer] Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev, today, promised to come to the financial aid of Nicaragua. He met in Moscow with Nicaraguan President Daniel Ortega, and an official statement afterward pledged assistance in solving Nicaragua's urgent economic problems. Ortega reportedly was seeking $200 million in immediate help. The Kremlin statement gave no specifics. Ortega

is on a two-week trip to the Soviet Union and the countries of Eastern Europe. In South Africa, there was more death today. Six blacks died, including a policeman who was attacked by a mob, then strangled and set afire. There was rioting reported in 15 black townships yesterday and again today. There were also urgent discussions underway to resolve the dispute between black gold mine workers and their employers. 14,500 miners were fired for participating in an illegal strike. Vaal Reefs, the world's largest gold mine, dismissed the largest number of miners. Most of them boarded buses to return to their homes in the South African tribal homelands in three neighboring countries, Lesotho, Swaziland, and Mozambique. Later, there was an indication that some of the fired miners might be taken back onto the workforce if they apply. Later in the program, we'll have a focus section on American policy in South Africa. [Hunter-Gault] 34 months of Israeli occupation ended in southern Lebanon today. As battle scarred troops shouted "let's go home," thousands

of Muslim villagers in the town of Tyre showered each other with rice and rose petals and danced in the streets. Welcomed initially as a liberating force that drove out the PLO, the Israelis eventually wore out their welcome, bringing about a series of relentless guerrilla attacks on them. This is the second phase of the pullback scheduled to be completed in June. [Lehrer] And finally, in the news of this day, seven astronauts, two monkeys, and 24 rats, are off in space tonight aboard Space Shuttle Challenger. Their launch went flawlessly except for a two-minute, eighteen-second delay caused by some computer software. They will be gone a week doing extensive medical and other scientific experiments. The work will be done in a space lab by the crew, that includes two physicians, two physicists, and a chemical engineer. The monkeys and rats will be used to test weightlessness and other effects in space. [Astronaut] Standing by, down to 65%. Pass through max queue. [Musical sting] [Lehrer] There is always news from South Africa these days, and it is usually about violence

and death. Today, it was violence in fifteen black townships and death to six blacks, including a policeman who was attacked, strangled, and then set afire by a mob of other blacks. Today, the Minister of Law and Order gave a grim tally to the South African Parliament. Since last September, when anti-apartheid protests escalated, 217 blacks and fifteen whites have died, 736 blacks have been injured, and 10,000 have been arrested. There was even a new statistic added over the weekend: 14,500 black gold miners were fired from their jobs for participating in an illegal strike. Authorities fear this action could lead to even further violence.

The news from South Africa has been accompanied by news about it here in the United States, mostly concerning anti-apartheid protests and calls for the U.S. government as well as U.S. business and industry to increase pressure on the minority white South African government to change its policies toward the black majority population. It is the subject of our lead focus segment tonight and brings together two men who debated this same issue right here four years ago. Oliver Tambo, president of the outlawed African National Congress, the largest organization for black independence in South Africa, and Senator Richard Lugar, Republican of Indiana, now Chairman of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee. Mr. Tambo, in New York to you first, the Minister of Law and Order also said today that your organization is working at making South Africa ungovernable and uncontrollable. Is that true? [Tambo] It is true. We are the victims of a crime. The government is carrying on a crime, perpetrating a crime on our people. We have an obligation to stop the crime, to stop the operation of

the apartheid system by making it unworkable. We have no alternative to that. For decades now, we have been confronted with this problem. It has been identified internationally as a crime against humanity, and it is a crime felt daily by our people. And we are obliged, we are duty bound, to do whatever we can to free ourselves of this crime. [Lehrer] Senator Lugar, do you agree that Mr. Tambo and his organization and the others who feel the same way in South Africa have no alternative other than to make the country uncontrollable? [Lugar] I would hope that they have other alternatives. I appreciate the poignancy of what he is saying.

And clearly, the South African government is not handling the situation well. Friends of that government have suggested kindly that they will really need to move in the next few weeks and months for power-sharing in South Africa. And that will be very difficult for them to do politically. But other than that, it appears to me that the kinds of events are likely to increase in scope and South Africa will become more and more ungovernable. [Lehrer] So you think, is the U.S. government saying that, what you just said, to the leaders of South Africa? [Lugar] I would hope so privately. I would think that it is obvious on the face of it that the degree of difficulty for South Africa is substantial. And that the debate that people are indulging in in this country about disinvestment or about a sanction here or there is almost beside the point. People are making decisions with regard to investment in South Africa, with regard to loans and what have you, which have been increasingly adverse to that country. [Lehrer] How do you feel about that, Mr. Tambo, about what the United States is doing or should

do in the investment area or any other area? [Tambo] Well first of all, we have reached this situation of consistent and mounting death exactly because we have done very little so far, all of us together, to stop that system. What we have asked the United Nations to do and what we have asked the United States to do is to put pressure on the South African regime in forms which would be effective. [Lehrer] Like what? [Tambo] For example, disinvestment, sanctions. These have not been applied and it is significant that the situation has worsened. It is worse this year than at any time in the past both in terms of the level of conflict and in terms of the sheer numbers of people who are being killed. [Lehrer] Senator Lugar, you do not think those techniques will work, is that right?

[Lugar] I think they would be ineffective, all of the legislation I have introduced suggests that after a two-year period of time, and Bishop Desmond Tutu suggested two years ought to be a fair trial before disinvestment was tried, that we ought to try some positive things. Our government ought to become involved with blacks in South Africa with scholarship assistance, training of teachers, with humanitarian aid, with ways in which this country exemplifies its idealism in a hands-on operation, as opposed to one in which we separate ourselves, hobble American business, which is perhaps the most progressive thing occurring in South Africa. I would be in favor of trying to get American business more involved in offering incentives to business to do so because I think that is the only effective way that America really will have much to say about the evolution of things in South Africa. [Lehrer] What do you think of that, Mr. Tambo? [Tambo] Well, what happens, and what has happened with investment all along, is that the apartheid

economy has grown strong. The system of apartheid has been strengthened by these investments. That is exactly why there has been no change, and that's why there's going to be no change, except perhaps as a result of escalating violence. [Lehrer] Is it-- there's going to be another discussion in a moment about the disinvestment argument specifically-- but Mr. Tambo, is it your feeling that this violence, you agree with the senator that is a matter of weeks now or months before the violence is going to get even worse then, in South Africa? [Tambo] I agree. I think-- I don't think there is any alternative to that. [Lehrer] How bad? I mean, what are we talking about? [Tambo] Well, it's not possible to predict, but one can tell from the permanence of the present state of affairs, the fact that no police action, no army action has stopped this, there's

a direct confrontation now between the people and the regime and its forces. [Lehrer] Is your organization encouraging the violence? [Tambo] Our organization is encouraging the people to struggle with everything at their disposal. They must use everything they can to free themselves from the apartheid system. The problem about, even the two-year period, is what happens in the meantime. Apartheid is there with all its violence and viciousness, and we have no alternative but to fight it while it is there. It's not as if, over a period of two years, somehow the effect of the apartheid system will be suspended. Pending the happening of some event, it has become intolerable. And the present conflict is almost a natural development of the escalation that must result

from the recalcitrance and the unchangeability of the apartheid system, and the growing demand of the people that the system has become intolerable and unbearable. [Lehrer] Senator, how do you answer that? [Lugar] Well, I would part company with Mr. Tambo by saying that it is important in the United States that South Africa continue to exist as a country, as opposed to being in a situation of anarchy or warfare. In other words, I feel Mr. Tambo believes so strongly he's prepared to see the sort of dissembling of the country, and Americans ought not to feel that way. South Africa has valuable mineral resources. It has a free press, freer than any other African country. It has a lot of things that are very admirable. It has a form of government that is intolerable. And our course really ought to be within the next couple of years of time to try to work with blacks in South Africa and to work with that government to change its ways.

Now, many would say that is a forlorn situation, but we can't take that option in a cavalier way, and simply let things play out. And to the extent Mr. Tambo and his forces are trying to hobble the government and bring it down, I would just say that the alternatives that he and his people might present might not be free press and democratic, and we've seen the evolution, for example, in Zimbabwe, which has not been pleasant to those who anticipated something that was more democratic. [Lehrer] What happens during this two years, though? He says that there's going to be more-- it's going to happen no matter what? [Lugar] Well, I think we cannot accept that fact. I would grant that if America does not act constructively, then I suspect that the thing will be played out and will not be pleasant. I think we have an opportunity for leadership in this respect. I think we have to go beyond the constructive engagement policy we've had to a much more hands-on expression through American business and through idealism expressed in working with blacks in South Africa.

[Lehrer] You don't think that'll work, Mr. Tambo? [Tambo] No, I think the mistake here is that this argument fails to take into account the fact that the apartheid regime wants to survive. They want apartheid to survive. If only the blacks and the victims of it would accept it. If only the international community would do nothing about it. And they are playing for time. It's significant that they've made no change in that system for all the talks about reforms. But throughout these decades, even since they were to talk about change, there is really no change because they don't want to change, they want to survive. The latest statement by Prime Minister Botha before the-- well, President Botha, before the Tricameral Parliament-- makes it absolutely clear that they'll change all sorts of things but the apartheid system.

White men will rule or remain. [Lehrer] Do you agree with that, senator, that there is no commitment to change apartheid from the highest levels of the South African government? [Lugar] I think there is a great desire to change it, but tremendous problems in deciding what to do and how you can do it in a hurry. [Lehrer] Senator, Mr. Tambo, thank you both very much. Charlayne? [Hunter-Gault] We turn now to the part of the South Africa debate that is growing in intensity here in the United States, whether or not American investors should withdraw their funds from companies doing business in South Africa in protest of the country's rigid racial separation laws known as apartheid. At least five major cities and five states have enacted disinvestment laws. The movement was started by college students in the '60s and is once again on the rise. They started up again last month at Columbia University here in New York, when students blockaded an entrance to the administration building. The three-week protest, which was disbanded peacefully, mirrored the earlier campus demonstrations in the '60s.

The divest from South Africa demonstrations quickly became the big story on other campuses, on the west coast at San Jose State University and the University of California, Berkeley, where police were called in to remove the demonstrators from Sproul Hall. Pro-investment demonstrations spread to the State University of New York at Albany and Cornell University, New Jersey's Rutgers University, and Ohio's Oberlin, the University of Wisconsin at Madison and at the University of Louisville in Kentucky. In 1970, U.S. corporations directly invested slightly more than three quarters of a billion dollars in South Africa. By 1981, direct investment hit its all-time high of $2.6 billion. Last year, the Commerce Department estimated some $2.3 billion were invested in South Africa. For more on the investment debate now, we turned to David Ramage, president of the New World Foundation, based here in New York.

The foundation is a leader in the disinvestment movement. It decided last year to divest and urged other investors to follow suit. To argue the other side of the issue, we have Paul Murphy, vice president of the National Foreign Trade Council, a business group that represents 550 of the council's member companies that do business in South Africa. Let me just start with you, Mr. Ramage, on the overall question of disinvestment. Why is it a good idea? [Ramage] Well, the New World Foundation spent several years working at that precise question. We started out by trying to correspond with companies to see if they couldn't sign the Sullivan principles and do things to help improve the situation. [Hunter-Gault] Now, the Sullivan principles are a bunch of principles written by Leon Sullivan, a black minister who says that if the companies promote better working conditions and things like that, if they agree to that, then they should remain under those conditions, right?

[Ramage] And we joined in stockholder resolutions to try and encourage companies in which we had holdings to improve their performance and their behavior in relation to the apartheid regime. And finally, after several years of doing this, the board of the New World Foundation had a thorough review, a board workshop. And out of that workshop, we decided, independent of the economic arguments, that we simply had to add our voice to the public discussion. And one way to do that was to act to divest from our holdings and companies doing business in South Africa. [Hunter-Gault] What do you mean independent of the economic arguments? [Ramage] There is a great deal of discussion about whether or not a foundation like New World, which has holdings of $20 million. One small portion of that might be invested in companies who are doing business in South Africa, if we sell our stock in those companies, someone else

will buy it. It's a little unclear what our small holdings in those companies would have to do in terms of direct pressure, although as our chairman of our board likes to say, out of such drops come mighty rivers. Nonetheless, we decided to act as a public statement of moral concern, not because we believe that we were going to lead a movement to bring pressure. We believe the ultimate pressure is going to be, as a result, the public policy will allow these companies who are many of them, very small percentage of their operations are in South Africa. And we believe the public policy would encourage them to really get out. In the long run, if things turn the way I believe they're going to, and unfortunately going to, because of the resistance of the apartheid government, if they turn the way I believe they're going to turn, then it is going to be a very important thing for companies

to continue to try to do business in South Africa. [Hunter-Gault] Mr. Murphy, what's your general reaction to that? [Murphy] Well we agree with the critics, other critics of apartheid, that the system has to change there, but we feel that the role of the companies is a positive force for change in South Africa. There are two ways we can go about trying to influence a change in South African policy. One is essentially negative. The divestment, disinvestment campaign, unfortunately it appears that we have very little leverage, in fact, in the economic realm. The other approach is that it would be a positive approach, seeking to encourage those forces within South Africa, and among them are U.S. companies doing business there, and especially those working under the Sullivan principles, which have been mentioned, and these companies are contributing not just to the economic welfare of the workers, but we feel they are a leading edge advocating social change within the country.

Their presence is relatively small, but they can have a catalytic demonstration effect in the rest of the economy, and it's important to not give up on the situation in South Africa. There's still time for peaceful change in that country, and one of the most positive elements in that change would be the actions of affiliates of American companies in South Africa. [Hunter-Gault] You may have heard Mr. Tambo say just a few minutes ago, in answer to a question from Jim that investments strengthen apartheid, how would you respond to that? [Murphy] Well, to go back to the point I just made, it's a relatively small presence by U.S. firms in South Africa. So it's difficult to say that they materially strengthen the government of South Africa, but I think that the history of economic development bears out the thesis that very often economic development is destabilizing socially and politically as well. So I think you might look at this from that approach also.

[Hunter-Gault] How would you respond to that, Mr. Ramage? [Ramage] I would say that, unfortunately, whenever we get into the discussion about what is happening as a result of apartheid, somehow or other the conversation always moves to the companies that are involved. Now, less than 1% of the employees in South Africa or the workforce in South Africa are related in any way to American companies doing work in-- operating in South Africa. And it seems to us at any rate that we had to declare that at some point we simply will not countenance-- now, it might be a small amount of influence that we have economically. But there's considerable evidence that the amount of attention that the South African government pays to the divestment movement means that they simply don't like to have the light of publicity and attention brought to bear on their behavior. And therefore, we are involved, if you would, in a kind of symbolic public discussion about

what we will and will not support. We do not believe that there can be any justification to continue to support by whatever minor means the only country in the world where a small minority of people can completely deny any rights of citizenship and participation to a large majority people. [Hunter-Gault] You just don't buy that argument, Mr. Murphy. [Murphy] Well, I think that it is fine and laudable to make moral statements. But in this case, moral statements aren't enough. It's important to U.S. interests, to the interests of the U.S. citizen who abhors apartheid, to the interests of the companies that know that their way of business, just that they are hamstrung, their political system in South Africa amounts to a political straight jacket over a free economy.

And that's not in their interest either. So I think that there's reason to think beyond the need to make moral statements. We have to do more. Moral statements are just not enough in this case. [Hunter-Gault] Just not enough. [Ramage] Well, I agree, moral statements are just not enough. I suspect that if all the companies pulled out, that it wouldn't be enough either. And it would certainly help to inform the members of Congress and to inform the administration that the people of this country do not believe that we should be participating with a country with this kind of regime as if it were a civilized country. The fact of the matter is that we need to bring to bear whatever kind of attention we can bring so that, in fact, public policy, the behavior of this nation will help to change the situation. [Hunter-Gault] And you just don't buy the argument that you have more leverage if you stay within the company than if you have companies pulling out completely. [Ramage] I believe that, unfortunately, because I think that the Sullivan principles were well intentioned,

I think that many companies have tried hard to make a difference, but that unfortunately, by and large, the continued participation of business in South Africa is used by the government as a way to continue support and endorsement for that government. I happen to agree with Mr. Tambo that there is no evidence that there is any commitment to changing apartheid. The opening of the move toward a tri-cameral government made it very clear to blacks in that country they were not under any circumstances to be included. [Hunter-Gault] Very briefly, Mr. Murphy, do you see any evidence to stay with your way of doing things? [Murphy] Well, yes. I think there is some evidence. Granted, the evidence is, at times, contradictory from within South Africa. But, as I said before, I think it's important to encourage those forces which are trying to achieve some constructive change in South Africa and to avoid any actions which would

further polarize the situation and risk a downward spiral into uncontrolled violence in that country. [Hunter-Gault] All right. Well, Mr. Murphy and Mr. Ramage, thank you for being with us. Jim? [Lehrer] Still to come on the NewsHour tonight, a documentary look at communist Vietnam, ten troubled years after its big victory and more on President Reagan's interview today about Bitburg and the economic summit. [Musical sting] [Hunter-Gault] Tomorrow is the 10th anniversary of the fall of Saigon, the day North Vietnamese forces swept into the South Vietnamese capital and formalized that country's unconditional surrender. The decades-long battle, first against the French and then against the United States and South Vietnam, left a legacy of death and destruction. In the end, North and South Vietnam were reunited.

But even as the country prepares for this 10-year celebration, it is still preoccupied with conflicts. Recently, a Canadian television crew traveled the length of the country to get a glimpse of just what has happened to Vietnam and its people in those ten years. CBC correspondent Don Murray has this report. [Murray] For the Vietnamese, the siege has never lifted. Vigilance, they're told, is the only answer. Every day, the drill is the same. The men of anti-aircraft battery 58 near Hanoi run to take up their positions. Ready, as their commander puts it, to defend the capital against any enemy from any side. Ten years after the fall of Saigon, Vietnam still has the fourth largest standing army in the world.

It sucks up half the government budget, 30% of the country's output. Peace, the leaders say, is what the people want. But war is what the men who run this country prepare for. 30 years after the first shots were fired in the fight for independence, the Vietnamese army is still at war on two fronts, in Cambodia and here along the mountains on the northern border. For the Vietnamese, the war with the United States was unexpected and unwanted, a freak encounter in history. This, on the other hand, is the battleground that links Vietnam to the long chain of wars in its past and to its constant foe, China. In 1979, 600,000 Chinese troops swept over the mountains into Vietnam. They laid waste to villages and towns and moved 17 kilometers down the road. Three weeks later, they pulled back. It was, say, the Vietnamese, and they keep meticulous count, the 16th Chinese invasion in 2,164 years.

Since 1979, each side is poked and punched, shelled and attacked, and the Vietnamese siege mentality has deepened. Richard Broinowski, Australia's ambassador to Hanoi for two years. [Broinowski] The Vietnamese feel a great deal about their own defense, about their own sovereignty, about their own independence. They're still not secure, they don't feel secure, because they feel that China continues to want to have some kind of hegemonistic designs over them. And while that is the case, then the Vietnamese again, they continue to sustain their standing army is because they have. [Murray] Cambodia. Vietnamese soldiers don't just defend, they invade. Six years ago, they moved in, and they're still there. Some, these men, are leaving in a carefully staged departure for Western television cameras. The Vietnamese insist they occupied Cambodia for humanitarian reasons, to crush the genocidal regime of Pol Pot. But the occupation came at a cost of international condemnation and an almost general Western

quarantine of Hanoi. So the Soviet Union foots most of the bill, providing machines, all Vietnam's fuel, and a billion dollars in subsidies a year. Hanoi says one-third of its 180,000 occupation troops will be gone by the end of the year. That's little more than a public relations gambit. Foreign Minister Thach says the rest will stay for a long time. [Thach] We will know tomorrow if, today, Pol Pot forces are liquidated. But if there is no political solution, the Vietnamese troops will withdraw within five or ten years. [Murray] While it fights, Vietnam must also eat, and the need to grow more food has let the Politburo to water its ideological wine. The state no longer demands all the rice from peasant cooperatives. Farmers are now given production quotas.

Anything they grow over their quota, they can sell on the free market and keep the profits. The result? In four years, Vietnam has reduced its grain in rice imports from a million tons to 300,000 tons a year. But in the North, life is still precarious. Downtown Hanoi is a jam of bicycles. The daily anarchy at the intersection is directed by a harassed cop on a podium. He gets no help from traffic lights. They've been dismantled to save on electricity, because Vietnam is poor, very poor. The 60 million Vietnamese are, economically speaking, the basement dwellers of the world, sharing quarters with the 25 poorest nations. The French left Hanoi 30 years ago, but their aging trams trundle on, down streets the French designed, past buildings the French built. Little is changed, all has crumbled. Everything is repaired, preserved, recycled, and nothing is forgotten. We were taken to see the Nguyen family on Camtien(?) Street.

They were victims of the American Christmas bombing of 1972. Now they're presented to foreigners as model citizens. Their parents and a sister were killed when Nguyen Chiu(?) lost an arm, but she survived to marry and give birth to a child. Her brother, Loch(?), and his family live in the next room. On his day off from the machine tool factory where he earns 1,000 Vietnamese dong a month, that's about $100 at the official exchange rate, he cleans up. It is by Hanoi standards the good life, but Loch(?) says it's not much better than 10 years ago. After the war, he says the government had many difficulties. We had a duty to try and improve our daily life, but at the same time we had to be vigilant to be ready for war from the north. That's why we've had difficulties improving our situation. Nguyen Loch is well off. In Hanoi's main department store, people line up to buy a bar of soap, 35 dong, more than a day's salary for a government worker earning 600 dong a month.

The cheapest brand of cigarettes, 30 dong, a bicycle, 6 to 8,000 dong, a year's wages. One foreigner living here says he still doesn't know how the Vietnamese make ends meet. Some don't. Down the street from the main bus station you find the beggars in shacks and lean-tos. They've come in from the towns and villages to the north, the land can't support them there. Government officials make no apologies for these problems. Nguyen Lo Thach, the foreign minister, says Vietnam has barely begun to recover from the war. [Thach] But if you compare with other countries in Europe, for instance, after five years of Second World War, they need five years to be rebuilt in their countries. And we have 30 years of war, and the number of bombs dropped in Vietnam are three times more than all over the world in Second World War.

So we need at least 30 years to rebuild our country. [Murray] A bridge over a river and a billboard at the junction announced the beginning of the Ho Chi Minh Trail near the 17th parallel. The Ho Chi Minh Trail is a highway now, and a stone marker proclaims it a symbol of socialist cooperation. It was paved by the Cubans. Officials say it's now a commercial transport route, but we saw just one Jeep and a local bus while we were there. Twenty years ago, traffic was heavier. 90,000 men a year walked down the trail, supplies on their backs, under a carpet of American bombs, one tonne for every man. The Americans hurled more than bombs. They rained down chemicals and defoliants, but the men and supplies continued creeping south. The toll, however, was tremendous. In the military cemetery of Truong Sun, 10,306 men lie buried. They are the dead, but only some of the dead from the Ho Chi Minh Trail, from the battles

of Khe Sanh, Quang Tri, Da Nang. Kruong Din Huang (?) fought with these men from 1968 to 1975, some were close friends. Their headstones tell a story. They were young, 17, 18, 20, and almost all were from the north. It was, as the Americans said, a war of the north against the south. The south is another country, richer, more fertile, more relaxed. Physically, Saigon looks the same. Relics of a gaudier era still stand in the streets, reminders of a time when Americans dominated the city, when the dollar was king. The Americans are long gone, but on the black market, the dollar is stronger than ever. Saigon is starved for them.

One dollar can get you up to 400 Vietnamese dong, close to a month's salary. The city even seems to sound the same. But Saigon is now Ho Chi Minh City, and the party in this restaurant is to mark the end of a successful socialist agricultural workers' conference, the face of socialism smiles for the camera, but the smile hides much. What we weren't allowed to see tells a story in itself. Anything to do with the Soviet presence in Vietnam, and the new economic zone where hundreds of thousands of people from the south have been forcibly relocated, working the land under conditions scarcely better than in prison camps. Which begs the question, why did the Vietnamese want the battalions of the Western media looking at reporting on their country ten years after the fall of Saigon? Vietnamese officials hint at it, talk about it in code words, but perhaps the irony is too great for them to come right out and say it.

What they're hoping for is reconciliation with the United States. They want the Americans to be friends again, to be benefactors with their money and their methods and their technology. On the 10th anniversary of the final victory over Yankee Imperialism, the message is, please come back. [Musical sting] [Lehrer] Finally, tonight, a longer look at President Reagan's pre-Summit conversation about Bitburg and other matters with six foreign correspondents. Judy Woodruff has more. Judy? [Woodruff] Jim, there were other subjects discussed at today's session between the president and the foreign reporters, including the economic summit itself, which their countries will be attending. But the chief topic of interest, as it turned out, for Europeans as for Americans, was the Bitburg visit. Here are some more excerpts from today's interview. [Reagan] This all came about out of a very sincere desire of Chancellor Kohl and myself to recognize this 40th anniversary of the war's end, and incidentally it's the 30th anniversary

of our relationship as allies in NATO, that shouldn't we look at this and recognize that the unusual thing that has happened, that in these 40 years, since the end of that war, the end of that tragedy of the Holocaust, we have become the friends that we are. And use this occasion to make it plain that never again must we find ourselves enemy, and never again must there be anything like the Holocaust. And if that is what we can bring out of these observances and the trip that has been planned, then I think everything we are doing is very worthwhile. [Gerard Saint Paul] Mr. president, sorry to insist on that, but the new report published in the New York Times says that some SS buried in Bitburg maybe participated in a massacre in Oradour,

Oradour is a village in the south of France, and there were all together 642 victims. Did you know that? How would you comment on that? [Reagan] Yes, I know all the bad things that happened in that war, I was in uniform for four years myself. And again, all of those, you were asking with reference to people who are in the cemetery who are buried there. Well, I've said to some of my friends about that, all of those in that cemetery have long since met the supreme judge of right and wrong, and whatever punishment or justice was needed has been rendered by one who is above us all. And it isn't going there to honor anyone, it's going there simply to in that surrounding

more visibly bring to the people an awareness of the great reconciliation that has taken place. And as I've said before too many times, I guess the need to remember in the sense of being pledged to never letting it happen again. [Saint Paul] SDI, your strategic initiative of defense, does not provoke unanimity. For instance, President Mitterrand of France said yesterday in my TV station, the SDI technology is very interesting, but the strategy is maybe wrong. What do you answer to that? [Reagan] Well, perhaps at the summit that subject comes up, perhaps I can clarify things for him so he'll understand what it is that we have in mind. First of all, let us be perfectly aware that the Soviet Union has, over a longer period

of time, has already embarked on that kind of research. And what would be the plight of all of us if the Soviet Union, which has the most and greatest nuclear weapons arsenal in the world, also had with it a defense against nuclear weapons and the rest of the world didn't. [Fritz Pleitgen] The Soviet leader, Gorbachev, has just offered deep strategic arms cuts. Do you think it's a good proposal or do you feel that he just want to put you on the defensive? [Reagan] Well, if he's trying to put me on the defensive by asking for deep nuclear weapons cuts, I'm very pleased to be. I won't be on the defensive because I won't defend against that. I was very optimistic before the talk started when the late Chernenko and Foreign Minister Gromyko both publicly stated that they would like to see the elimination of nuclear offensive

weapons. Minister Gromyko said to me at one time, "how long are we going to sit here on these mountains ever getting higher of such weapons?" And I asked him then, I said, "well, we have it between us the ability to lower those mountains, and as long as we're equal at whatever level we stop, then we have a legitimate deterrent that would indicate that they'll never be used." [Woodruff] That was an excerpt of the interview the president had today with six foreign journalists. And now we hear from three of them who sat in on the meeting with Mr. Reagan. First of all, let's go back to Bitburg. The president said it was morally right for him to go there. Fritz Pleitgen, you're the Washington correspondent for the German television network ARD. How do you think your viewers reacted to that statement? [Pleitgen] They are delighted, the majority. We have got a lot of telephone calls, and they are very, very pleased by the remarks of Ronald Reagan, and these remarks have smoothed a lot of ruffled feathers, especially on the

conservative side of the spectrum, and politically it has helped Helmut Kohl a lot, especially now that he is facing very critical elections in our largest state, North Rhine-Westphalia. [Woodruff] The fact that the president is going through with it? [Pleitgen] Yes. And on the other hand, there's another interesting point. Kohl and Reagan have created a very unlikely coalition. It is the leftist, the Greens in particular, who have come out very strongly on the side of the American public in disapproving the cemetery visit and favoring the concentration camp visit, and it is the conservative, the Reagan allies, who have been very angered and have voiced anti-American feelings.

[Woodruff] Jon Snow, you cover the United States for England's Independent Television Network. How do you think your viewers would react to what the president said about Bitburg today? [Snow] I don't think it's as big an issue anyway as it is for the Germans, although it's been a big issue in the sense that Margaret Thatcher, the prime minister, has made it clear that she was against the visit. What the president had to say tonight, well, at least he said something, and that they had not seen before. [Woodruff] As I understand, the White House had asked you all ahead of time not to ask questions about Bitburg, is that correct? [Snow] Well, they'd advised that it would be a wasted question if asked, but nevertheless, it obviously had to be asked, and our viewers would have thought it very odd if we got right through the interview without raising the issue. But I don't think that it really makes much difference. I think it's still seen as a very confused piece of management and mistaken. [Woodruff] How is that? For what reason? Because there's been so much of an outcry in the White-- and the president's refused to change his mind, do you think that's what's harming? [Snow] Curious enough, how to celebrate 40 years of peace, as Mr. Reagan has put it, has been

a confused issue throughout Europe and in Britain ever since the D-Day business last year. And consequently, when this one came round, I think there was no surprise that there was going to be a muddle. I think, curiously, that in Britain there's also some confusion about why the Russians are not being, why this isn't being used as a moment, maybe, to make some kind of a rapprochement with the Soviet Union, because, after all, we in Britain are only too conscious that without the Red Army, and, of course, the Americans, we'd never have made it. [Woodruff] All right, what about in France? Gerard Saint Paul, you report for the French television network, it's television one. How do you think your viewers--? [Saint Paul] Let me be very frank. With thinking, France, there is maybe a kind of disproportion between the overreaction around and about, Bitburg and the real issues of the Bonn summit. Of course, we don't forget the Holocaust, no problem about that. But we think there is kind of, you know, again, a disproportion.

We think president Reagan tried to make a kind of reconciliation gesture, and we know what is reconciliation in France because of Germany, with your-- our neighbor. And of course, there is a mistake. The trip was prepared in a non-professional way, and there were a lot of mistakes. But again, maybe it's too much. [Woodruff] So when the president said, I think he said, "I think the American press has overreacted like a dog chewing a bone," you're saying--? [Saint Paul] No, I don't agree with that. Press is doing its job, and it's maybe necessary. But I mean, the reaction in the public opinion in America is maybe a little bit too exaggerated. [Pleitgen] Well, I do not understand that. I found that the reaction of the American press was quite fair, was quite appropriate. And it was completely misunderstood in Germany because maybe you have heard there is now a reaction in Germany that they feel the Americans are trying to make us guilty

eternally what Germans have done 40 years ago. But I think the whole is exploited by the politicians, and it is very well known that the politicians are making mistakes, and the press is reporting about it, and then the press is blamed for this. But the politicians have made the mistakes. There's no doubt about it. And the press has just reported about that. [Woodruff] Going to the summit with his colleagues in Europe and Japan and Canada, is the president weakened because of Bitburg, and because of the fact that he has suffered this defeat on Nicaraguan aid, Nicaraguan aid for the rebels, and also because of the uncertainty over the budget? All of that together, coming together, does the president go to the summit a weakened leader? Jon Snow? [Snow] I don't think he does. I think all the leaders go to the summit somewhat embarrassed by the whole affair. He doesn't look to me as if, and I don't think it looks to a lot of people, as if anybody has handled the whole business of 40 years on very effectively.

The interesting thing about our whole session with the president was that he manifested far greater fervor about a totally non-Summit issue that of contra-aid than he did about anything to do with either Bitburg, the world economy, trade, Japanese tariffs, whatever. [Woodruff] What did you make of it? [Snow] Well, that there is somewhere in his psyche an absolute biting obsession with contra-aid, with the whole Nicaraguan issue, and that, I think, to some of our viewers, will be very perplexing. How it is that with these huge world problems, the issue of $14 million to some diminutive little outfit down there is a very curious business, and does, I'm afraid, help to widen the gulf between Europe and America, this misgiving that may be Bitburg, maybe the contras, that there is a sort of mishandling that goes on, which if that's what happens over little things like visiting graves, what happens when the big one strikes? [Woodruff] All right. Just one other thing. He mentioned, he talked about Gorbachev, what impression did you come away with, Mr.

Saint Paul, about how he feels toward--? [Saint Paul] Well, the regret is that there is, as you know, a kind of propaganda work between East and West. And with all these issues, I'm afraid it's now all benefits for Gorbachev. And instead, in Bonn, we should demonstrate a very strong Western unity, which is not the case now. [Woodruff] Thank you all for being with us. Gerard Saint Paul, Jon Snow, and Fritz Pleitgen, for joining us. Charlayne? [Hunter-Gault] Once again, the main stories of the day. President Reagan said it is morally right for him to visit a German war cemetery. An armored car company was robbed of $8 million in New York. Six more people were killed in continuing violence in South Africa. Good night, Jim. [Lehrer] Good night, Charlayne. We'll see you tomorrow night. I'm Jim Lehrer. Thank you and good night. [Voice-over] The McNeil Lara News Hour is funded by AT&T, reaching out in new directions; the Corporation for Public Broadcasting, and this station and other public television stations.

[Outro music] For a transcript, send $2 to Box 345, New York, New York, 10101.