Colonel Ha Van Lau 1918-2016

I had often wondered about Ha Van Lau, the Vietnamese diplomat who was interviewed in this series, virtually the only communist who got to express the communist point of view on the war, in a show with countless US/south Vietnamese interviewees. I'd looked him up before to no avail, but tonight I looked him up again and found that he died on December 6, 2016, just three days before his 98th birthday, in Ho Chi Minh City.

http://vietnamnet.vn/vn/thoi-su/nguyen-thu-truong-ngoai-giao-ha-van-lau-qua-doi-344973.html

https://vi.wikipedia.org/wiki/H%C3%A0_V%C4%83n_L%C3%A2u

He was born in a village near Hue on December 9, 1918. His father was a teacher. He intended to study in France, and graduated from a French military school as an officer. In 1944 he joined the Viet Minh. With his military experience he became a trainer for the People's Army of Vietnam. He served as a commander in the 9-year struggle against the French colonialists when France invaded again after the 1945 August Revolution. At the end of the war he held the rank of colonel. In 1954 he began his diplomatic career as a delegate for Vietnam at the Geneva peace conference. He was then one of the main Vietnamese negotiators at the peace talks during the long struggle against the US and its Saigon puppets in the 1960s and early 1970s. After Vietnam's victory in 1975, he served as ambassador to Cuba, Jamaica and Guyana. Then he was ambassador to the UN from 1978 to 1982 (during which he was interviewed for this series). In 1982 he became deputy foreign minister, and from 1984 served as ambassador to France, the Netherlands, Belgium and Luxembourg. After this he presumably retired, as nothing more is said until his death in 2016.

He had a long, eventful and distinguished life. R.I.P.