News-Info-Alerts

To: ALL

From: Andi Wolos & Bob Necci

(POW-MIA InterNetwork)

Re: Peterson Considering Florida Run

Date: June 29, 2001

"U.S. Ambassador to Vietnam Pete Peterson responds to a question during an interview with The Associated Press in Hanoi Friday, June 29, 2001.

HANOI, Vietnam (AP) - America's first postwar ambassador to Vietnam says he won't make a hasty decision whether to seek the Democratic nomination for governor of Florida. But his words suggest an eagerness to run.

"I've been a Floridian for the vast majority of my life, and I have a good deal of feeling for what I would like to see the state be," Ambassador Douglas "Pete" Peterson told The Associated Press in an interview Friday.

Peterson, 66, leaves his post July 15 to return to his home state, where he is being courted by Democratic leaders who believe he can win the governorship now held by Jeb Bush, brother of President Bush.


The three-time former congressman said he is considering running but will evaluate his chances more closely once he goes back to Tallahassee with his second wife, Vi Le, an Australian-Vietnamese trade official he met and married in Hanoi.

The Vietnam War veteran and former prisoner of war said it's too early for him to discuss a broad range issues, but noted that "the growth factor in Florida has always been a big problem."

"If you look at growth, then you look at all the other problems - education, infrastructure, environment. These are always looked at as individual problems, but the big problem is planning for growth. That's a factor that has not been addressed at the level of seriousness that I would do if I was at a point of leadership," he said.

Jeb Bush, 48, has announced plans to seek a second term. Many Democrats remain outraged at President Bush's victory in the Florida voting that decided last year's presidential election, and some have made his brother's ouster a top priority in next year's gubernatorial elections.

State Rep. Lois Frankel and State Sen. Daryl Jones of Miami have said they will seek the Democratic nomination. Others considering entering the Democratic primary are former U.S. Attorney General Janet Reno, U.S. Rep. Jim Davis of Tampa, Tampa attorney Bill McBride and Broward County Sheriff Ken Jenne.

Turning to U.S.-Vietnamese relations, Peterson said he believes the two former enemies have succeeded in charting a course of reconciliation.

"I came here with the idea of trying to get two nations to communicate and understand each other," Peterson said. "By and large, I think we do have that. We have a much better understanding between the peoples and governments of our two nations."

During his four years as ambassador, Peterson guided a gradually thawing detente with Hanoi that culminated in the signing of a historic trade pact last year. Congress is likely to pass the bilateral trade agreement this summer. The pact is expected to open up Vietnam to unprecedented trade and commerce with the United States.

"Clearly the BTA is the most lasting instrument we worked on here because it will govern our economic relationship for the next several decades," he said.

Peterson said President Clinton's visit to Vietnam last November, the first trip by an American leader since the war ended in 1975, was "very important and enormously successful ... (in saying) the conflict from the 60s and 70s is still well remembered. But that doesn't mean it has to obstruct progress. We want to stay engaged."

Peterson has pursued formal normalization with the same single-mindedness he attached to his own personal reconciliation.

A former Air Force pilot, he was shot down in his F-4 Phantom jet on Sept. 10, 1966, while making his 67th bombing run over North Vietnam.

He spent 6 1/2 years as a POW, three in the notorious "Hanoi Hilton" prison, where he was tortured and held in solitary confinement before being released in 1973.

Peterson returned to Vietnam in the spring of 1997, settling into the U.S. Embassy just a few miles away from where he was once incarcerated.

"I do think my past experience has helped me personally in working for reconciliation because I have seen Vietnamese in their worst circumstances and they saw me at my worst as well," he said. "Now we're seeing ourselves perhaps at our best so we know the difference in where we were and where we can be." "