Mission to Account for 110 M.I.A.'s Will Resume After 3 Years
By TERENCE NEILAN
fter a three-year delay, United States officials will soon resume operations to account for some 110 missing American servicemen in the troubled Central Highlands region of Vietnam, the Department of Defense has announced.
As a first step, American and Vietnamese technical experts will meet in Pleiku, Vietnam, in September to review cases and interview witnesses, the department said on Wednesday.
Access to the region has been delayed for three years because of what the department said was "local unrest." The area is home to the Montagnards, a minority of about 700,000 isolated people from at least five ethnic tribes in a country of more than 77 million, mostly ethnic Vietnamese.
During the Vietnam War, many of the fiercely independent Montagnards fought alongside the Americans, leading to their persecution when the war ended in 1975.
Tensions in the area have remained high, but officials in Gia Lai province have agreed that American search operations will resume, and that they should be conducted in the same manner as in the rest of the court, the department said.
The deputy assistant secretary of Defense for P.O.W/Missing Personnel Affairs, Jerry D. Jennings, met with the officials in Pleiku on Tuesday and said:
"I am very pleased that Vietnamese officials both at the provincial and central government levels are again willing to allow us access to this sensitive region. This is a very positive step."
Mr. Jennings said he had notified American investigators to resume contact with officials in the Central Highlands in order to schedule search operations.
A total of 1,885 Americans are still listed as missing in the whole of Vietnam.
President Bill Clinton extended full diplomatic recognition to Vietnam on July 11, 1995, saying it was time to "bind up our own wounds," but a full acounting of Americans still missing was a key condition for the agreement.
The action completed a process begun by the first President George W. Bush in 1991. Recognition was sought as eagerly by American business groups as it was bitterly opposed by the American Legion and some relatives of American servicemen who went missing in the 1960's and 1970's.
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