Hanoi Links Lifting of Trade Barriers to Recovering MIAs : Says Many Bodies Can Be Found If U.S. Cooperates

Vietnam proposed a new plan today for resolving the fate of more than 2,000 U.S. servicemen still missing from the Indochina war but attached conditions, including a resumption of trade.

“If the U.S. wants to cooperate with us they can find many remains,” Vice Foreign Minister Ang Bich Fon told reporters after a two-hour meeting in which the plan was presented to a visiting American delegation.

The delegation--led by U.S. National Security Council member Richard Childress and Ann Mills Griffiths, executive director of the private National League of Families of Prisoners and Missing in Southeast Asia--refused to comment on the session.

2,464 on Missing List

The talks, held at Vietnam’s invitation, were to resume Thursday.

Fon declined to reveal details of the new MIA plan but said it was designed to resolve within two years the fate of 2,464 American servicemen and civilians still listed as missing in action during the conflict. There are 1,376 cases involving Vietnam.

Fon said the plan would not succeed without changes in policy toward Hanoi by Washington, including the removal of Vietnam from its “enemies list” and the lifting of a U.S. trade embargo.

He also complained that Washington had provided “very few” documents to Vietnam and had not lent it the sophisticated equipment needed to help locate MIA remains.

Help of People Needed

Improved relations are required to enlist the help of the Vietnamese people, whose assistance is needed to pinpoint the locations of remains, he said.

Vietnamese officials turned over the remains of 26 men two weeks ago in the largest MIA repatriation since the Vietnam War ended in 1975. Since 1974, the remains of 125 servicemen have been returned to the United States.

Assistant Secretary of Defense Richard Armitage and Assistant Secretary of State Paul Wolfowitz originally were scheduled to lead the American delegation, which would have been the highest-level U.S. mission to Vietnam since the war. But the two top officials dropped out when Vietnamese officials said Foreign Minister Nguyen Co Thach would not attend the talks.

Cooperation Accelerated

Vietnam began to accelerate its cooperation with the United States early this year, increasing the frequency of low-level technical talks and, for the first time, taking U.S. military personnel to the crash site of an American warplane.

Vietnam has also suggested the United States establish a permanent MIA liaison office in Hanoi.

“There won’t be a liaison office until Vietnam can demonstrate close cooperation such as permission for joint searches and digs,” said a U.S. official in Bangkok, Thailand, who requested anonymity.

U.S. officials have said repeatedly Washington will not re-establish formal ties with Vietnam until Vietnamese troops withdraw from Cambodia.