Bush opens his visit to Hanoi

HANOI, Vietnam — President Bush, opening a visit Friday to the wartime capital of this once-divided country, stirred inevitable comparisons between the unpopular war raging in Iraq and the divisive war fought and lost in Vietnam more than three decades ago.

His itinerary promised some interesting moments. Before attending a state dinner tonight, Bush was to drop by the headquarters of the Communist Party to talk with its general secretary.

Bush was the fourth U.S. president to visit Vietnam, where communist forces prevailed over the United States and a Washington-backed regime in Saigon in a conflict that claimed the lives of more than 58,000 Americans. President Bill Clinton visited Vietnam in 2000; Lyndon Johnson and Richard Nixon made wartime visits.

Bush and his aides have pushed back against comparisons of the war here and the Iraq war, now in its fourth year. Like Vietnam, the United States faces a determined insurgency in Iraq; both wars have demonstrated the limits of U.S. power.

"Historic parallels of that kind are, I think, not very helpful, and I don't think they happen to be right," Secretary of State Condoleezza Rice told reporters earlier. "This is a different set of circumstances with different stakes for the United States in a different kind of war."

Bush flew here from Singapore after warning a nuclear-armed North Korea against peddling its weapons and vowing the United States will not retreat into isolationism.

Although Republicans lost control of Congress, Bush directly challenged newly empowered Democrats who are demanding a fresh course in Iraq and fearful that free-trade agreements could cost U.S. jobs.

"We hear voices calling for us to retreat from the world and close our doors to these opportunities," the president said in a speech at the National University of Singapore. "These are the old temptations of isolationism and protectionism, and America must reject them."

Bush came to Vietnam for a summit of Asia-Pacific leaders and individual meetings with a handful of leaders — all of them curious whether election setbacks had unsettled Bush.

Bush will draw on his powers of personal diplomacy in meetings Saturday and Sunday with Russia's Vladimir Putin, China's Hu Jintao, Japan's Shinzo Abe and South Korea's Roh Moo-hyun. All are partners with the United States in talks aimed at persuading a defiant North Korea to abandon its nuclear weapons.