Pacific Rim Bureau (CNS News) - In a significant agreement, the United States, Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia have agreed to improve cooperation in searching for U.S. soldiers missing in action since the Vietnam War - but the American official who negotiated the deal is also mindful of MIAs from an earlier era.
Jerry Jennings, the deputy assistant secretary of defense responsible for prisoners of war and missing personnel affairs, hopes to question an alleged U.S. Army deserter who spent four decades in North Korea about the possible presence of other Americans in the isolated Stalinist state.
The Pentagon has received reports over the years suggesting that some POWs from the 1950-1953 Korean War may still be alive inside North Korea.
Speaking in Thailand, Jennings said he wanted to ask Charles Jenkins, who recently left North Korea, whether he had seen any other Americans there.
"If he answers 'yes,' I would like to know who they were," Japan's Kyodo news agency quoted Jennings as saying. "But if he says 'no,' I would have no other questions for him. He is [of] no interest to me beyond that question."
Jenkins is, however, of interest to the U.S. government. The former U.S. Army sergeant is accused of deserting and defecting to North Korea in 1965 while serving with U.S. forces in the Demilitarized Zone dividing the Korean peninsula.
For the first time since the 24-year-old disappeared during a routine patrol, he is now within reach of U.S. military justice.
Last month Jenkins, now 64, flew to Japan for medical treatment. He is shortly to meet with a U.S. military lawyer there for discussions that could prepare the way for an eventual court-martial.
Korean War missing
More than 8,100 U.S. personnel are still listed as MIA from the Korean War, according to the Defense Department's POW/MIA Affairs Office (DPMO).
Since 1996, more than 200 sets of remains believed to be those of U.S. soldiers have been recovered during joint operations involving U.S. and North Korean specialists.
While that work continues, there have also been reports over the years, from sources including North Koreans who have defected to South Korea, pointing to possible sightings of American men working fields in the North.
In 1996, a DPMO analyst drew up a background report which said the office believed there could be a group of 10-15 possible American POWs in North Korea.
The U.S. has asked Pyongyang in the past for permission to talk to the four suspected U.S. defectors believed to be still alive in the North. Permission was refused each time.
Jenkins' departure from North Korea may provide the first such opportunity, however.
His presence in Japan is the culmination of a saga that began when he American married a Japanese woman in North Korea in 1980. It emerged in 2002 that that woman, Hitomi Soga, was one of at least 13 Japanese citizens kidnapped by North Korean agents during the 1970s, to serve as teachers of Japanese language and culture to Pyongyang's spies.
After North Korea admitted to the kidnappings, the surviving abductees returned to Japan. Soga was among them, but fearing handover to the U.S., Jenkins chose to remain in North Korea with their two young adult daughters.
Amid massive public interest and sympathy, Tokyo last month arranged a reunion for the family in Indonesia, chosen as a safe location as it doesn't have an extradition treaty with the U.S.
From Jakarta, Jenkins agreed to go to Japan with his family on July 18 rather than return to North Korea alone, despite the risk of being handed over to U.S. officials.
Japan's Chief Cabinet Secretary Hiroyuki Hosoda said at the weekend that Jenkins was expected to meet with a U.S. military lawyer this week.
'Highest priority cases'
Jennings, the U.S. official, has been in Southeast Asia for consultations with the governments of Cambodia, Laos and Vietnam on POWs and MIAs.
A statement from the U.S. Defense Department said delegates at the two-day talks agreed to trilateral investigations on MIA cases in border areas. In such cases, "the United States will join either Vietnam and Laos, or Vietnam and Cambodia to mount a three-nation ... effort."
Special emphasis would be placed on Washington's "highest priority cases" - involving personnel last known to be alive (known as LKAs) at the time they went missing.
The Pentagon said the two issues - improving three-way investigations in border areas, and resolving LKA cases - were among those President Bush had identified as key to success in accounting for missing personnel.
Another success in the current series of talks was a bilateral agreement with Vietnam to get access once again to sensitive areas of the country's Central Highlands, where entry had been denied for three years due to local unrest.
Of the 1,855 Americans still missing from the Vietnam War, which ended in 1975, some 110 are thought to be in the Central Highlands area. Earlier searches in Vietnam, Cambodia and Laos have accounted for more than 700 Americans.
"The U.S. is bound by law and morality to account for each and every American still listed as missing in action from armed conflicts," the Voice of America said this week in an editorial reflecting the views of the U.S. government.
"If possible, the remains of MIA's confirmed to be dead must be found and properly interred. And so long as the possibility exists that missing American servicemen may still be alive, the U.S. must make every effort to find them and bring them home."
©CNS News