HANOI (Reuters) -- Vietnam on Monday condemned U.S. Sen. John McCain's use of the term "gooks" to refer to his Vietnam War captors, saying the slur was hurtful and unworthy of someone running for the U.S. presidency.
"The fact Mr. John McCain uses such words and makes such statements that lack goodwill have hurt Vietnamese and Asian people," Hanoi's Foreign Ministry spokeswoman Phan Thuy Thanh said in response to questions on McCain's quoted comments."This statement is not worthy of a U.S. senator, especially one running for the U.S. presidency," she said. "This obviously does not bring credit to him individually nor benefit U.S. foreign policy."
Last week, McCain refused to apologize for his use of the racial slur to condemn North Vietnamese prison guards who he says tortured him in captivity during the Vietnam War.
"I hate the gooks," Friday's San Francisco Chronicle newspaper quoted McCain as telling reporters on his campaign bus the previous day. "I will hate them as long as I live."
McCain, who spent five years as a prisoner of war in Hanoi, stressed he was referring only to his prison guards.
He added: "I will continue to refer to them in language that might offend some people because of the beating and torture of my friends."
The Hanoi spokeswoman said the Vietnamese people had suffered "many crimes and much sorrow" as a result of U.S. aggression during the war.
"It is Vietnamese people who have the right to talk about this. It is a chapter of sadness and sorrow in the history of the relations between the two countries."
She said Hanoi's policy was to be friends with all countries and in the case of former enemies to "set aside the past and look forward to the future and cooperate for mutual development."
"We think the U.S. side understands this point."
McCain, an Arizona Republican, was shot down on a bombing mission over Vietnam in 1967. A Vietnamese militiaman saved him from drowning in a Hanoi lake and then from angry civilians who wanted to kill him.
Despite his treatment in captivity, McCain advocated reconciliation between the United States and communist Vietnam. He made several trips to the country in the 1990s and was a key force behind the normalization of diplomatic ties between the two sides in 1995.
Because of his wartime record and suffering as a prisoner, McCain gave U.S. President Bill Clinton, a Democrat, political cover to restore diplomatic relations with a nation some Americans still regard with bitterness.