December 6, 2006
Hanoi, Vietnam

Agence France-Presse

Former US president Bill Clinton was greeted by cheering crowds on an AIDS campaign stop in Vietnam, where he is fondly remembered as the first US leader to visit the communist nation.

He met Vietnamese President Nguyen Minh Triet and held a roundtable discussion with a group of young medical students and an activist who is infected with HIV.

The former president signed an accord between the health ministry and his Clinton Foundation HIV-AIDS Initiative that will extend treatment to a total of 1,200 Vietnamese children infected with the killer disease by late next year.

The project would triple the number of children given the anti-retroviral medicines, he said, and the goal was to ensure that "all the children in Vietnam who need it have access to the medicine."

Clinton stressed the need for more testing— pointing out that 90 percent of HIV-positive people do not know they carry the virus— but he said a precondition for this was reducing the stigma associated with the disease.

"Ignorance is killing us," he told the roundtable. The less information people had, he said, "the more likely they are to act in a really stupid way, a mean way, a cruel way toward people who are HIV-positive."

Giving examples from visits to Lesotho and India, he said, "You have no idea what this can become," warning one or two million Vietnamese could easily become infected and urging his young discussion partners to spread their message.

In Vietnam, 300,000 people were now believed to be HIV carriers as the disease crossed from high-risk groups such as intravenous drugs users and prostitutes into the general population, a study by US thinktank the Center for Strategic and International Studies said this year.

The visit was Clinton's second trip to Vietnam, where he was cheered by tens of thousands of people in 2000 for being the first post-war US president to travel to the former enemy nation, having earlier lifted a US trade embargo.

"I am glad to be back in Vietnam and to see that so much progress has been made since my wonderful visit here in 2000," Clinton said.

"I congratulate you on your World Trade Organization membership and on the outstanding leadership you gave during the recent APEC conference," he added, referring to a summit of Asia-Pacific leaders hosted by Hanoi last month.

Clinton spent half his morning walking down Hanoi's leafy streets surrounded by scores of US and Vietnamese security staff.

He paid a courtesy call to an art gallery he visited six years ago while a cheering crowd applauded and asked for autographs.

"I am so happy to see Clinton back in Vietnam. He is always welcome in our country," said Pham Thu Lan, 45, a fruit seller in Hanoi's old quarter.

Tran Thanh Tam, 56, the owner of a hat shop, said: "I did not know he was coming. I wish he had visited my shop, I would have loved a picture with him."

Clinton earlier visited India, Indonesia, Thailand, Cambodia and Papua New Guinea on a tour of countries where the Clinton Foundation operates or which were affected by the 2004 Asian tsunami.

The foundation, which Clinton has run since leaving the White House, helps developing nations expand HIV/AIDS treatment and has negotiated reductions in anti-retroviral drug pricing.