Vietnam has paid tribute to the late John McCain, saying the late senator was instrumental in “healing the wounds of war” and normalizing relations between the two countries. People laid flowers for McCain at the U.S Embassy in Hanoi on Monday and at the monument built where he parachuted from his Navy Skyhawk dive bomber in October 1967 and was taken prisoner of war. “For both the government of Vietnam and its people, Senator McCain was a symbol of his generation of senators, and of the veterans of the Vietnam War,” Foreign Minister Pham Binh Minh wrote Monday in a condolence book at the U.S. Embassy. “It was he who took the lead in significantly healing the wounds of war, and normalizing and promoting the comprehensive Vietnam-U.S. partnership.” McCain died of brain cancer Saturday in his home state of Arizona.