French President Visits Dien Bien Phu
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HANOI — Seeking to heal old wounds, French President Francois Mitterrand made a pilgrimage Wednesday to the battleground where Vietnamese guerrillas crushed his country’s forces. He called the Indochina War a mistake.
The visit to Dien Bien Phu, site of a two-month siege in 1954, was the emotional centerpiece of Mitterrand’s historic trip, the first by a Western head of state to Communist Vietnam. He later flew to Ho Chi Minh City, which in its former identity as Saigon was once a French colonial capital.
“French colonialism had to understand the necessity of turning the page,” Mitterrand said. . The Indochina War “appeared to me to be a mistake,” he said.
Mitterrand has been criticized by some veterans at home for visiting Dien Bien Phu. But major veterans’ groups have been supportive.
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