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In Final Drive, Obama Seeks Better Relations with US Foes 

JOSH LEDERMAN
Associated Press
WASHINGTON (AP) — In his
final stretch as president,
Barack Obama is driving
the United States toward
friendlier relations with
longstanding adversaries,
working to consign bitter
enmities with Vietnam, Iran,
Cuba and Myanmar to the
history books.
Though the reconciliations
have been years in the
making, Obama hopes he
can prove the benefits of
his softer approach before
he hands control to an un-
certain successor in Janu-
ary. Defiant cries of naiveté
by his opponents have only
strengthened his convic-
tion that the  U.S. must re-
lease itself from an us-ver-
sus-them mentality forged
during wars that ended de-
cades ago.
The quest for resolution was
on display this week in Ha-

President Barack Obama bows to the audience after speaking at the National Convention Center in Hanoi, Vietnam, Tuesday, May
24, 2016. Obama gave a speech aimed at the people of Vietnam a day after announcing the lifting of a five-decade-old arms sales
embargo that’s meant to help forge a new economic and security relationship with this young, fast-growing Southeast Asian na-
tion. In his final stretch as president, Barack Obama is driving the United States toward friendlier relations with its most longstanding
adversaries, working to consign bitter enmities with Vietnam, Iran, Cuba and Myanmar to the history books.

                                                                                                                                                       (AP Photo/Carolyn Kaster)

noi, where Obama lifted an      president to visit the site   minder of the intimate alli-  nursing long-forgotten ri-
arms sales embargo that         where the U.S. dropped the    ance between two nations      valries. He noted that he’s
had stood as one of the last    first atomic bomb — help-     that now view China more      the first president to come
remnants of the Vietnam         ing end World War II but      warily than they do each      of age after the war, telling
War and the deep freeze         sowing resentments. Seven     other.                        his young audience that his
that persisted until the two    decades later, those have     Speaking to the Viet-         own daughters had grown
nations restored relations      mostly fallen away. Though    namese people Tuesday,        up knowing only peace
in 1995. Obama’s next           his move has rankled          Obama dismissed calls for     between the U.S. and Viet-
gesture will come Friday in     some  U.S. veterans and       keeping the communist-run     nam.
Hiroshima, Japan, where         some Japanese, Obama’s        country at a distance, the
he’ll become the first sitting  visit will be a powerful re-  stance of those fecklessly        Continued on page 2