Part of Delegation : Dornan in Vietnam for MIA Talks

Rep. Robert K. Dornan (R-Garden Grove) and eight other U.S. congressmen arrived here Thursday on the eve of a two-day visit to Hanoi, during which they will seek information about the nearly 2,400 American soldiers still missing in action from the Vietnam War.

The bipartisan group plans to confer with Vietnamese officials today and Saturday, and then tour a refugee camp on the Thailand-Cambodia border after returning from Vietnam.

“This MIA issue is of paramount importance to the American people and that is why we are here,” said Rep. Gerald B.H. Solomon (R-N.Y.), who heads the delegation and is chairman of a congressional task force on MIAs.

Seeks ‘Full Disclosure’

“We will press the Vietnamese to make a full disclosure of what they know--to give us all the relevant information about our missing soldiers,” he added.

Solomon, speaking minutes after a military jet carrying the delegation landed in Bangkok, said that he and his colleagues will remind Hanoi officials of their pledge to disclose within two years all remaining information about MIAs in Vietnam and Laos.

The delegation is the third such group of ranking American officials to travel to Hanoi in the past six months. A previous entourage, consisting mainly of Defense Department and Army officials, won promises from the Vietnamese to turn over the physical remains of 26 American soldiers.

Solomon said that his group will ask Hanoi officials for similar disclosures, pointing out that American military officials have suggested that Vietnam may be on the verge of turning over the remains of an additional 50 servicemen.

To Probe Sighting Reports

Other members said that they will question Vietnamese officials about the reported sightings of American soldiers allegedly being held captive in Vietnam, Laos and Cambodia. Many of these reports have come from Vietnamese, Cambodians and Laotians living in sprawling refugee camps along the Thailand border.

“We will address that issue head-on . . . that’s perhaps the biggest issue of all,” said Dornan, who strode briskly off the plane wearing a blue flight jacket embroidered with a picture of a partially clad woman, three crossed swords and the name “Lt. R.K. Dornan.”

“If Vietnam wants to be considered a decent nation, if it ever expects to take its place in the community of nations, it will have to help us resolve this problem of missing Americans once and for all,” Dornan declared.

Members of the delegation said that they had been briefed earlier by officials of the Joint Casualty Resolution Center, an agency that works full time on the MIA issue. The evidence that there are 50 to 60 Americans still being held captive in Vietnam is “overwhelming,” said Rep. William M. Hendon (R-N.C.).

As a result of American pressures to resolve the MIA issue, he added, “we have now moved the debate away from whether there are any Americans still held captive over here to how can we get them out.”

Vietnamese officials, anxious for a normalization of diplomatic relations with the United States and eager to receive billions of dollars in foreign aid, find it in their interest to cooperate on the MIA issue, Hendon emphasized.

However, officials with the Joint Casualty Resolution Center take a more cautious view of the reported sightings of Americans in Indochina. Lt. Col. Paul Mather, who heads the agency’s liaison office in Bangkok, said Thursday that his office received more than 900 such reports last year and investigates each one carefully before determining its validity.

While Mather said it is conceivable that some Americans may still be held captive in Southeast Asia, he did not offer any statistics to document such a problem. Center officials interview thousands of refugees throughout Southeast Asia about such sightings and sometimes have “only very sketchy” information to rely on, he added.

Asked if he expected Solomon’s delegation to produce any new information about missing Americans, Mather said that the Vietnamese are often secretive about their intentions but have learned that there is tremendous public relations value in appearing to cooperate with such groups.

“They (the Vietnamese leadership) are pretty well plugged into how they have been portrayed in the American media,” Mather said. “This latest delegation is conveying the same message, making it clear that Americans are very concerned about this issue.”

Other members of the delegation, which was welcomed at the airport by William Brown, U.S. ambassador to Thailand, are Reps. David Dreier (R-Covina), Benjamin A. Gilman (R-N.Y.), Chris Smith (R-N.J.), Francis X. McCloskey (D-Ind.), Robert C. Smith (R-New Hampshire) and John G. Rowland (R-Conn.).