HANOI, Vietnam -- Responding to a U.S. newspaper report that an elite unit of American soldiers killed hundreds of innocent civilians in the Vietnam War, Hanoi said Tuesday the conflict caused "much suffering" but the country does not want to dwell on the past.

The (Toledo) Blade reported Sunday that soldiers in the U.S. Army's 101st Airborne Division Tiger Force unit went on a seven-month killing rampage in 1967 in Vietnam's Central Highlands.
 

Troops killed women, children and elderly farmers. Some soldiers cut off the ears of the dead and wore them around their necks, the paper said.

"The U.S. war of aggression has caused much suffering and losses to the Vietnamese people," Foreign Ministry spokesman Le Dung said in a statement, responding to a written request from The Associated Press for comment on the Blade report.

But he said Vietnam wants to put the conflict to rest.

"With the tradition of humanity and concord, in relations with the U.S. as well as with countries which were once hostile to Vietnam, we advocate strengthening mutual understanding through cooperation to promote increasingly better bilateral relations," he said. "That is the basis to solve the consequences left by the past."

The U.S. Army conducted a 4 1/2-year investigation after a soldier who was outraged by the killings came forward, The Blade said. The inquiry reached the Pentagon and the White House, but was closed in 1975 and never made public, the newspaper reported.

The Army said Sunday it lacked sufficient evidence for prosecuting those allegedly involved.

Based on interviews with civilians and former Tiger Force soldiers, it was estimated the unit killed hundreds of unarmed people, The Blade said.

Relations between the United States and Vietnam have improved in recent years. The two signed a bilateral trade agreement in 2001. Two-way trade reached $2.9 billion last year, up from about $1 billion before the deal.

Earlier this month, the two sides signed an aviation agreement allowing the first direct flights between their countries since the war, which ended in 1975.