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Sunday Morning News

Vietnam Celebrates 25th Anniversary of End of Vietnam War

Aired April 30, 2000 - 8:01 a.m. ET

THIS IS A RUSH TRANSCRIPT. THIS COPY MAY NOT BE IN ITS FINAL FORM AND MAY BE UPDATED.

KYRA PHILLIPS, CNN ANCHOR: Well, we begin this morning in Vietnam. It's been a quarter of a century since the fall of Saigon when communist soldiers defeated the U.S. after a long battle.

CNN's Richard Blystone reports on anniversary celebrations in Ho Chi Minh City, the former Saigon.

(BEGIN VIDEOTAPE)

RICHARD BLYSTONE, CNN CORRESPONDENT (voice-over): In the relative cool of 6:30 in the morning, the old soldiers remembered the past. Tho Win Japp (ph) on the left, the general whose strategies had frustrated Japan, France and then the United States. When the balloons went up, the focus lifted to Vietnam today and tomorrow, a display of national pride, an assertion of national unity.

Soldiers too young to remember the war paraded past some 20,000 invited guests within the grounds of what was the palace of U.S.- backed President Win Van Tuy (ph) and is now called the Reunification Palace in what's now called Ho Chi Minh City.

Girls in black pajamas that recalled the uniform of the Vietcong, representatives of the new Vietnam's every pursuit, every ethnic group, every religion, every hue in this vivid country's rainbow. General Win Tu Kung (ph) was one of the first to arrive here 25 years ago and says he could never have imagined then the way it would look now. Controversial war photographer Philip Jones Griffiths (ph), no friend of the Thieu (ph) regime...

PHILIP JONES GRIFFITHS, WAR PHOTOGRAPHER: You know, this is what it was always meant to be like and anyway, now it's all up to them, no excuses.

BLYSTONE: Vietnam's vice president, Nguyen Thi Binh, once a high ranking Vietcong, says we must use our experiences to establish friendly and cooperative relations on every side. Out the gates and into the streets for a half kilometer walk past a couple of thousand of the uninvited, including a handful of American visitors.

For this girl it was an atmosphere of excitement and togetherness.

UNIDENTIFIED FEMALE: We see many improvements in our country. BLYSTONE: But there are many in this former southern capital who have little reason to celebrate the advent of communism. A short parade to mark so great a transformation. It was not so much victory, but independence and hope that seemed to lift hearts this day.

(on camera): The finality of what happened here 25 years ago started a new kind of military era for what is now the world's only superpower, the United States -- Grenada, Somalia, the Gulf, Kosovo, but never another Vietnam.

Richard Blystone, CNN, Ho Chi Minh City.

(END VIDEOTAPE)

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