News-Info-Alerts

Re: Vietnam agrees to New Measures

To: ALL

From: Andi Wolos & Bob Necci

(POW-MIA InterNetwork)

Date: August 02, 2002

"Vietnam agrees to new measures to account for MIA soldiers

HANOI - Vietnam has agreed to new measures to help account for Americans missing from the Vietnam War, including giving U.S. experts access to government archives, a senior U.S. official said Friday.

Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Jerry Jennings, concluding a week-long visit to Vietnam Friday, said the first initiative would be an archive research program. It would give U.S. experts access to policy-level POW/MIA information in various files, including those in the ministries of public security and defense, and the Politburo.

The program was agreed to during a meeting Jennings had Friday with Deputy Prime Minister Nguyen Tan Dung.

The positive reception from the Vietnamese side is "indicative of a new level of cooperation" on this issue, Jennings said.

He said he was also able to inaugurate a program of interviewing senior Vietnam War-era military leaders for information that could help locate missing soldiers.

Accounting for missing Americans from the Vietnam War has been a cornerstone of the U.S.-Vietnam relationship since the two sides first began their tentative detente in the late 1980s.

There are currently 1,907 Americans missing in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos. Since 1973, the remains of 673 Americans have been repatriated. There are still 1,444 Americans missing in Vietnam.

The two sides have been cooperating on joint recovery operations since 1992, with four major excavations scheduled annually.

Vietnam's own missing-in-action number is around 300,000, and the U.S. has been assisting them with their search, Jennings said.

Vietnamese forensic specialists have gotten training on DNA identification methods, and three archivists were brought to the United States to do research in American archives. The U.S. has also turned over thousands of pages of documents to the Vietnamese, he said.

"This effort has been under way for some time," he said.

The United States spends up to $6 million a year conducting searches, which often involve helicopter flights carrying U.S. and Vietnamese military and civilians into remote areas.

2002 by The Associated Press. "