Last week, a French delegation headed by Mr. Jean Pierre Masseret, Secretary of State Without Portfolio in charge of Veterans Affairs was in Hanoi for an official visit.

On March 17, he visited Dien Bien Phu, the site of a large and bloody battle between French units and the Viet Minh-controlled Resistance Forces, that helped bring the French-Indochinese War to the end with an agreement on July 20, 1954 in the Geneva peace talks.

In the 1946-54 War, France was fighting to re-establish its colonialist power in Vietnam. Soldiers in French Army units (Africans, Vietnamese, Frenchmen) were almost free to commit war crimes, while French forces relied on "terreur blanche" policy to frighten the Vietnamese away from supporting the Resistance forces. Massacres of the My Lai type were common during the 46-54 War. Rapes, tortures, summary executions became routines in operations in the countryside.

American soldiers serving in South Vietnam from 1965 to 1972 were fighting with their different attitude because they came to Vietnam to fight a war with a loftier cause - at least nominally - not for colonialism. American troops rarely committed war crimes, and violators, if any, were often given well-deserved sentences. The My Lai case has been unique.

Now both France and the United States have normal diplomatic relations with the Vietnamese Communist regime. But officials of the two countries are acting differently in Vietnam.

Minister Jean Pierre Masseret and nearly 250 French veterans, members of an association of the former POW's in Indochina arrived at Dien Bien Phu for a ceremony in memory of the French Army fallen soldiers. In the memorial service, Mr. Masseret laid a wreath on the memorial of the French war dead in Dien Bien Phu.

It had been built by French Army Sergeant Rodel with his own money after his 1992 visit. In 1996, Rodel got financial support from President Jacques Chirac.

Meanwhile, no American has ever done the similar, particularly Ambassador Pete Peterson. It is understandable that as an ambassador, he is not free to do everything he would. But the Americans might ask him NOT TO DO SOME.

Last week, Ambassador Peterson attended a movies show held by a Communist agency in Hanoi. It was a documentary film produced by Hanoi state-controlled movies production center about the 1968 massacre in My Lai.

The My Lai killing has been exploited to the greatest extent by Western media as well as Vietnamese Communist propaganda system. The new version of the documentary was an effort of Hanoi to reorganize the events in an order that suited Hanoi's scheme of reviving anti-Americanism.

Ambassador Peterson has his authority to do such action, but his presence and statement at the film show seemed unnecessary and might be undermining the dignity of the U.S.A. unless he publicly expressed his opinion about the more horrible massacres committed by the Vietnamese Communist forces. The most typical is the killing in the 1968 Tet Offensive with at least 3,000 victims whose bodies were found in mass graves around Hue City after the area had been retaken by the U.S. Marines and South Vietnamese troops.

Talking about the My Lai massacre without a word about the Hue mass graves is one of the unforgivable sins. If he dared not voice such concern because he didn't want to anger his Communist hosts, he should not have attended the show.

In the past, sometimes Mr. Peterson had acted similarly. Once he accepted a brick from the "Hanoi Hilton" or Hoa Lo where he had been detained for nearly 7 years as prisoner of war, presented by a Communist cadre as a souvenir of Peterson's time in prison. Despite what the Communists might have explained to him, the Vietnamese people only see in it a humiliating reminder: "You were once our prisoner!"

When a ten thousand of poor farmers in Thai Binh province rallied to protest local authorities, Mr. Peterson said that there was no such demonstrations and no one was arrested because of that.

About a month later, the Hanoi government admitted that there were waves of demonstrations by farmers, and they even marched towards the provincial town. Hanoi also confirmed that more than 40 people were detained and prosecuted because of their violations criminal code while joining the protests. Mr. Peterson had no comment on his mistakes.

In the Vietnamese-American community, people are saying that Mr. Peterson is an ambassador of the Vietnamese Communist regime, not of the United States.

We wish that some day, Mr. Peterson or any other American would do something like that of the Australians who held a memorial service to their 18 fighting fellows who were killed in the Long Tan 1965 battle where 254 Communist soldiers' bodies were left.

Some said that Ambassador Peterson can do anything he considers necessary to defend and promote the interests of the American people - we, living in America are included. But we suggest that he do nothing that only help consolidate Communist party power.

He might not consider his flights over North Vietnam more than 30 years ago served the right cause. He might not think highly of the more than 58,000 Americans and 220,000 Republic of Vietnam soldiers who were killed in battles for the world's Freedom. But he should at any time, protect the dignity of this country, the beloved United States of America.

***** March 28, 1999.