Vietnam’s top leader said his nation is ready to stand shoulder-to-shoulder with the world’s great powers, as tens of thousands gathered to watch a military parade marking 50 years since the end of the war and the defeat of the U.S.-backed southern regime.
The war left us "lessons with profound values,” Communist Party General Secretary To Lam said Wednesday at the ceremonial event in Ho Chi Minh City, formerly known as Saigon. Those include "leaving the past behind, looking toward the future,” he said.
The anniversary is a watershed moment for a country that for decades battled and eventually defeated global powers France and the U.S., with which Vietnam later developed strong economic and diplomatic ties. Some 13,000 Vietnamese police and armed forces personnel marched through the country’s commercial hub, joined for the first time by troops from China, Laos and Cambodia, while fighter jets roared overhead.
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