Vietnam, United States evaluate MIA progress
Vietnam, United States evaluate MIA progress
HANOI (Reuter): Top U.S. and Vietnamese officials yesterday reviewed progress in determining the fate of U.S. airmen and soldiers missing since the Vietnam War, an issue crucial to improving links between the two countries.
The outcome could dictate the pace at which U.S. President Bill Clinton decides to establish diplomatic relations with Hanoi.
U.S. delegation leader Hershel Gober, deputy secretary of veterans affairs, rejected suggestions that accounting for the 2,205 servicemen still listed as missing in action (MIA) in the war, which ended 20 years ago, was a dead issue.
"America is a country that does not like to leave its dead warriors on the battlefield," Gober told reporters.
"As full as possible an accounting, as President Clinton said, is very important to us. It's very important to the families that they have the remains of their loved ones back," he said before talks began.
Gober said the mission would assess progress on the issue of prisoners of war (POWs) and MIAs, thank Vietnam for its cooperation "and urge them to continue with this very important issue to America".
The United States is trying to determine the fate of 1,619 MIAs in Vietnam, where the U.S. armed forces backed the losing Saigon regime in a war that ended with a communist victory in 1975.
There are 501 MIA cases in Laos, 77 in Cambodia and eight in southern China.
All are presumed dead, but the U.S. military does not close the file on them until the circumstances of death have been proved and remains found. Only 378 Americans have been fully accounted for since the end of the war.
Gober, Assistant Secretary of State Winston Lord and Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense for POW/MIA Affairs, James Wold received a U.S. military briefing on searches for MIA remains.
They then went into formal talks with a Vietnamese delegation led by Le Mai, deputy minister of foreign affairs in charge of relations with the United States.
In an indication of the importance Hanoi attaches to the mission, the U.S. officials are due to meet Vietnam's most senior official, Communist Party General-Secretary Do Muoi, before leaving tomorrow to continue an Asian tour.
Clinton has said concrete progress on the MIA issue will help determine the pace of normalization of ties.
He lifted an economic embargo against Hanoi last year and the two governments established formal relations in January, setting up diplomatic liaison offices in each capital.
Gober declined comment on the climate in Washington on speeding up normalization, saying only: "That's a decision the president will have to make."
Advocates of full diplomatic relations between Hanoi and Washington want Clinton to act before the 1996 U.S. presidential election campaign primaries start late this year.