In new role, Kerry back in Vietnam's Mekong Delta [View all]

[Omaha Steve]

Source: AP-Chron

CA MAU, Vietnam (AP) — John Kerry returned Sunday to the winding waterways of Vietnam's Mekong Delta region where he once patrolled on a naval gunboat in the search for communist insurgents.

But nearly 50 years later, Kerry was promoting sustainable aquaculture and trade in a rapidly expanding economy rather than hunting Viet Cong guerrillas at the height of the Vietnam War. This was Kerry's first visit back to the Delta since the war.

On this tour, the secretary of state was clad in long, drab olive cargo pants, a blue-and-white plaid long-sleeved shirt and sunglasses instead of the uniform he wore as a Navy officer in 1968 and 1969. In a new role, Kerry was revisiting the Delta's rivers that made a vivid impression on him as a young lieutenant.

"''I can still close my eyes and I can remember the country that I saw then during the war: the site of water buffalos, incredible narrow rivers, the mangrove, the fishermen and their wooden boats," Kerry said in a video posted to the website of the U.S. Embassy in Hanoi promoting his first trip to Vietnam as America's top diplomat.

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Read more: http://www.chron.com/news/politics/article/In-new-role-Kerry-back-in-Vietnam-s-Mekong-Delta-5064058.php

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Photo By Brian Snyder/AP
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U.S. Secretary of State John Kerry, left, and his friend and fellow Vietnam War veteran Tommy Vallely, right, walk along a street in Ho Chi Minh City, Vietnaqm to attend a service at the Notre Dame Cathedral, Saturday, Dec. 14, 2013. Forty-four years after first setting foot in the country as a young naval officer, Kerry returned once more to Vietnam on Saturday, this time as America’s top diplomat offering security assurances and seeking to promote democratic and economic reform.