Vietnam's Giap warns U.S. on Iraq
(CNN) -- General Vo Nguyen Giap, the architect of Vietnam's victory over French forces at Dien Bien Phu 50 years ago, has warned the United States it faces defeat in Iraq.
Asked for his thoughts on Iraq, Giap told CNN's Stan Grant that no matter how modern a country's weapons were or how much money it had, it had no right to invade another country.
He said a nation that ignored this "moral teaching" would be defeated.
Giap said a country that stands up and knows how to unite will always defeat a foreign invader.
Giap, now 94, led the Vietnminh army of communist leader Ho Chi Minh in a historic 55-day siege of French forces at Dien Bien Phu, in the north of the country.
The siege ended when the French troops, worn down by constant artillery barrages and unable to resupply by air, surrendered on May 7, 1954.
That defeat saw the French colonial power withdraw, followed by the partitioning of Vietnam into north and south, and the gradual involvement of the United States into what became a bloody 20-year war.
That conflict cost about 2 million Vietnamese military and civilian lives, the deaths of more than 55,000 U.S. servicemen and women, and about 6,000 service personnel from South Korea, the Philippines, Thailand, Australia and New Zealand.
The bulk of U.S. forces withdrew after the signing of the Paris Peace Accords in January 1973.
But fighting between the north and south continued and did not finally end until April 1975 when north Vietnamese forces took over the southern capital of Saigon, now known as Ho Chi Minh City.
Giap, in Dien Bien Phu to mark the 50th anniversary of the historic battle, evoked Ho Chi Minh's description of the battle as a "golden milestone," and told CNN that Vietnamese people could never be slaves to anyone else.
"Nothing is more precious than freedom," Giap said. "It was a victory for Vietnam and the world at large".
Vietnam later fought border battles with China and invaded Cambodia in 1978 to overthrow Pol Pot's Khmer Rouge regime.
By the early 1990s, communist Vietnam began to embrace market reforms, and started a period of rapid economic development.
In February 1994, then-U.S. President Bill Clinton lifted the U.S. trade embargo on Vietnam, and normalized relations with the country in July 1995.
In the same month Vietnam became a member of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations (ASEAN).
