U.S. MIA Team to Go to Hanoi : Vietnam Will Return 26 Americans’ Remains

The United States, responding to a Vietnamese invitation, will send a high-level delegation to Hanoi to discuss the problem of U.S. prisoners of war and servicemen missing since the Vietnam War, the State Department announced Friday.

Department spokesman Bernard Kalb cautioned, however, that the mission will discuss only the POW-MIA issue and said that the United States is not moving toward establishing diplomatic relations with Vietnam.

At the same time, the U.S. Joint Casualty Resolution Center in Honolulu announced that Vietnam will turn over the remains of 26 U.S. military men to American officials in Hanoi next Wednesday--the largest such number to be given to the United States since the war ended in 1975.

The delivery of the American servicemen’s remains was promised last month during a tour of Southeast Asia by Secretary of State George P. Shultz. In addition to the 26 bodies, the Pentagon said, Vietnam has also promised information on six other U.S. servicemen.

Vietnam has previously returned the remains of 99 Americans. The last group of six were turned over in April; four were the remains of pilots lost early in the war, and two were prisoners the Vietnamese said had died in captivity.

Still unaccounted for are 2,464 other U.S. servicemen. Although Hanoi has consistently denied that any prisoners are still alive, some families of missing men and other Americans believe that survivors may still be found.

Kalb said that Ann Mills Griffiths, executive director of the National League of Families of American Prisoners and Missing in Southeast Asia, will be part of the delegation going to Hanoi. She will join officials from the Pentagon, the State Department and the National Security Council. Their departure date has not been set.

Asked if the new mission heralds the establishment of a permanent POW-MIA office in Hanoi, something suggested by the Vietnamese in the past, Kalb replied saying only, “We’re talking about a delegation going to Hanoi.”

Two-Year Time Frame

Griffiths, however, declared that the permanent presence in Hanoi of U.S. technicians, who now arrive from Bangkok for visits every two months, will almost certainly be necessary to accomplish what she said is the Reagan Administration’s goal of reclaiming all remains from Vietnam within two years.

The U.S. announcement was welcomed by Vu Quang Diem, a member of Vietnam’s mission to the United Nations. In a telephone interview from New York, Diem said Hanoi hopes that the issue of missing U.S. personnel can be fully resolved within that two-year period through a “joint venture” by the two governments and that this can lead to normalization of relations.

However, Kalb said such normalization would not occur until Vietnam withdraws its troops from Cambodia in a manner “acceptable” to the Assn. of Southeast Asian Nations, the six non-Communist governments that have led the campaign for restoration of Cambodian independence.