Hillary Gets a Pop-Star's Welcome in Hanoi Via NY Transfer News * All the News That Doesn't Fit Thursday November 16 7:18 AM ET (via yahoo) Clinton Charm Quickly Works Magic in Hanoi By David Brunnstrom HANOI (Reuters) - The Clinton charm quickly worked its magic in communist Vietnam on Thursday, as Senator-elect Hillary hit the streets within hours of landing in Hanoi drawing screaming crowds of hundreds of local people. Having barely had time to drop her luggage at the presidential hotel after flying in from Leah Rabin's funeral in Israel, Hillary was driven to a downtown Hanoi art gallery to visit a painting exhibition. She then toured a shopping street attracting hundreds more screaming onlookers, who Vietnamese police and U.S. Secret Servicemen struggled to hold back, a highly unusual scene in the normally staid Hanoi. They cheered and screamed when Hillary waved. `I am delighted to be here,'' she told reporters. `I am very excited about our trip here. I feel very good about the wonderful reaction,'' she said. `Hi how are you!'' she said to a Vietnamese in the crowd. The impromptu visit was a bright spot for some in an evening of disappointment for many after Vietnam's passionately supported national soccer team crashed out of the regional Tiger Cup soccer semifinal 3-2 to Indonesia. Tran Hien Lan, an English literature teacher whose late father's paintings Hillary saw at the gallery, was thrilled and proudly showed the First Lady's signature in the guest book. `It's our great pleasure to see her here, because we've heard a lot about her, we've read a lot about her,'' she told Reuters. ''She is one of the most well-known women in the world. She is a very talented woman.'' Asked about Bill Clinton, who was due in Vietnam at about 11.10 p.m., Lan said: `He's one of the excellent men too -- man and president!'' Tran Bich Thoa, a frail woman in her seventies whose late husband Tran Dong Luong's work was on display at the gallery, said Luong would have been delighted. `I am very, very happy,'' she said. Bill Clinton Due Later President Clinton will arrive from Brunei, where he has been attending an Asia-Pacific Economic Cooperation forum. He will be the first serving U.S. president to visit Vietnam since the late Richard Nixon made a brief trip to the then U.S.-backed South Vietnam with his wife at the height of the Vietnam War in 1969. He will be first serving U.S. president to ever to visit the capital Hanoi. On Friday, Hillary Clinton will visit a microfinance aid project for women in a rural district outside Hanoi and then accompany her husband to Hanoi's National University where he is to deliver a keynote speech. U.S. officials expect Clinton's speech to be broadcast live on local television, the first time a foreign leader has been given such access to the Vietnamese people. On Saturday, the Clintons will travel to a site outside Hanoi where experts are working to find the remains of some of the 1,498 U.S. servicemen listed as missing in action from the Vietnam War. The Clintons, who will be accompanied by their daughter Chelsea, end their visit to Vietnam on Sunday in the southern commercial hub, Ho Chi Minh City. The city, also known as Saigon, was the capital of South Vietnam before the reunification of the country after the communists' 1975 victory in the Vietnam War. ================================================================= NY Transfer News Collective * A Service of Blythe Systems Since 1985 - Information for the Rest of Us 339 Lafayette St., New York, NY 10012 http://www.blythe.org e-mail: nyt@blythe.org ================================================================= nytas-11.16.00-08:38:10-10953