News-Info-Alerts

Re: US & NK to Discuss remains Recovery

From: POW-MIA InterNetwork

Date: July 09, 2003

"N. Korea, U.S. To Talk About Remains
Associated Press

WASHINGTON - After a months-long stalemate, North Korea and the United States have agreed to resume talks on recovering remains of American servicemen killed in the Korean War, officials said Tuesday.

The talks are to open Thursday in Bangkok, Thailand, according to Larry Greer, a spokesman for the Defense Department office responsible for accounting for missing American service personnel.

The United States wanted to open talks late last year on logistical and other arrangements for U.S. forensics experts to excavate battlefield sites this summer, but the dialogue ended after North Korea revealed to a State Department envoy last October that it has a nuclear weapons program.

Several days after that revelation became public, North Korea accused the United States of pursuing a hostile policy that "seriously impedes the exhumation of remains of the war dead, including the investigation and confirmation of the burial places."

More than 8,000 U.S. servicemen are listed as unaccounted for from the Korean War, which ended 50 years ago this month.

The U.S. search for remains has focused on former battlefields in the vicinity of the Chongchon River, north of Pyongyang, and in the Chosin Reservoir area, scene of some of the most savage fighting of the war in late November and early December 1950.

The Pentagon in the past has paid North Korea hundreds of thousands of dollars for services related to the excavation work, while insisting that it is not paying for the remains themselves.

Greer said the talks this week in Bangkok probably would last two or three days. The North Korean delegation will be led by Col. Gen. Li Chan Bok; the Americans will be led by Jerry Jennings, the deputy assistant secretary of defense for POW-MIA affairs.

State Department spokesman Philip T. Reeker said the talks would not include the issue of North Korea's weapons programs. Elaborating on that point Pentagon spokesman Lt. Cmdr. Jeff Davis described the recovery of remains as a "separate, stand-alone, humanitarian" issue.

"This has been the U.S. policy in our dealings with all other countries, and it has enabled us to continue moving ahead in our humanitarian work even if there may be policy difficulties in other areas," Davis said.

Greer said that in addition to working out arrangements for excavations at battlefield sites, the American delegation would repeat its request for access to four American servicemen who the Army says deserted their U.S. units in South Korea in the 1960s and are living in North Korea. In the past the North Koreans have said the four do not want to talk to U.S. authorities.

North Korea for the first time allowed U.S. forensics experts to search for U.S. remains in 1996. Since then, there have been 25 recovery operations on North Korean territory, resulting in the recovery of 178 remains believed to be those of American servicemen. Of the 178, only 14 have been positively identified as Americans.

Last year, three recovery operations resulted in the recovery of 26 sets of remains. That compares with 45 recovered in 2001 and 65 in 2000.

Copyright 2003 Associated Press. ©2003 Military Advantage, Inc. "