Vietnam to Probe ‘Live Sightings’ of U.S. MIAs

Vietnam has agreed to investigate “live sighting” reports of Americans missing in action and allow joint on-scene investigations in accessible areas, a U.S. official said Wednesday.

Richard K. Childress, heading an American delegation here, said the Vietnamese had pledged to provide written accounts of their inquiries into sighting reports provided by the American side and to pass on any evidence they find.

There have been thousands of sighting reports but no confirmations. Vietnam insists that no Americans from the war years are still alive in Vietnam, but the United States says it cannot rule out the possibility.

Childress said the United States formally committed itself to helping Vietnam meet its goal of resolving by the end of next year the question of 1,792 American military personnel still listed as missing in Vietnam.

Charges by Hanoi

Hanoi has accused Washington of not meeting its share of responsibility in the two-year plan that Vietnam announced in 1985.

Childress, a member of the National Security Council, led an American delegation in two days of talks with a Vietnamese delegation headed by Foreign Minister Nguyen Co Thach.

He said he gave Thach a letter from Richard L. Armitage, assistant secretary of defense, that commits the United States to “a list of many cooperative actions” in the Vietnamese effort. He would not give details but said it mentioned such forms of assistance as paying the cost of excavations at warplane crash sites.

Vietnamese officials complained before the talks in Hanoi about the failure of the United States to sign a written undertaking on the plan to resolve the issue.

The American negotiator said the letter from Armitage, about five pages long, spelled out U.S. “understandings,” including that the MIA effort is a humanitarian matter apart from political questions.