The Region - News from March 30, 1987

The leader of a rebel group fighting to overthrow the Vietnamese government told nearly 2,000 people who crowded into a Garden Grove auditorium that his forces will “spare no effort” to rescue Americans still missing or captured in Vietnam. “This we will do without any conditions and out of compassion for our former comrades in arms, because we respect human dignity,” said Le Quoc Tuy, a former member of the Vietnamese air force and now head of the United Front of Patriotic Forces for the Liberation of Vietnam. Gary Thomas, a spokesman for the National Vietnam Veterans Coalition, representing 27 affiliated veterans groups, said the veterans’ coalition had pledged to offer “humanitarian” assistance to the rebels. “They don’t need arms--they’re armed to the teeth,” said Thomas, a retired Air Force sergeant, adding that he visited the rebels this year at their bases in Cambodia. “They will have an American POW out of Vietnam within the year,” he predicted.