Talks With Hanoi on MIAs Stalled : 2-Year Timetable for Solving Issue of Missing in Jeopardy

American efforts to revive talks with Hanoi on the fate of more than 1,700 U.S. servicemen still listed as missing in action in Vietnam have hit a wall of silence.

The last meeting was nearly six months ago, and subsequent U.S. requests to set a new date have been turned aside by Hanoi for “technical reasons.” No contact has been made since February, and Vietnam’s two-year timetable for resolving the issue is in jeopardy.

“We’re ready to go, and they know it,” a Bangkok-based American diplomat who has been involved in the talks said the other day. “The ball’s in their court.”

Last month, U.S. Ambassador William A. Brown, now in Washington heading the investigation into espionage at the U.S. Embassy in Moscow, told a Bangkok audience that he is “hopeful the talks will resume in the not-too-distant future.”

2 Approaches Spurned

But two approaches by U.S. officials to the Vietnamese Embassy here have been turned aside, Brown said. Earlier, a proposed February date was rejected as inconvenient because it would conflict with the Vietnamese Tet holidays.

Last month, Le Mai, the Vietnamese ambassador to Thailand, told a Washington Post reporter that political reasons were involved. He, too, cited technical factors for the six-month delay in the talks, but according to the Post report, he went on to say, “We also want to show our disappointment over the U.S. cooperation.”

The ambassador, citing a seemingly minor incident, said the State Department had denied a visa to a Vietnamese pianist when “at the same time Vietnam granted more than 200 visas to U.S. citizens.” Hanoi’s press has also expressed displeasure over American arms deals with China and Thailand.

A year ago, technical talks between the two sides were progressing. In January, 1986, the Vietnamese renewed their pledge to try to resolve the issue to American satisfaction within 24 months. Hanoi officials also told the highest-level U.S. delegation to visit Vietnam since the end of the war, headed by Assistant Defense Secretary Richard L. Armitage and Assistant Secretary of State Paul D. Wolfowitz, that they would investigate any reported sightings of American prisoners of war in Vietnam.

Technical talks were scheduled at a rate of six a year, and in April, 1986, the Vietnamese turned over what were said to be the remains of 21 U.S. servicemen. The Vietnamese had begun to return remains in cases raised specifically by the American side, in some instances recently excavated remains.

Meeting Postponed

The momentum began to slow that same month, however. A technical meeting scheduled in Hanoi was postponed by the Vietnamese in response to the American bombing of Libya. Talks resumed on schedule through October, but only three more sets of remains were produced. And then Hanoi canceled the December meeting, citing a conflict with its important Communist Party congress.

The political report of the December congress declared that Vietnam “continues to hold talks with the United States to solve the humanitarian problems left by the war and is ready to improve relations with the United States in the interest of peace and stability in Southeast Asia.”

But there have been no talks since late October. In the same period, U.S. MIA negotiations with the Hanoi-allied government in Laos have also turned sour, and a Laotian commitment for excavation at a third wartime air-crash site has not been met.

Richard K. Childress, the National Security Council official who has spearheaded U.S. efforts on the POW/MIA issue, was in Bangkok several weeks ago but apparently made no personal attempt to get the talks going again.

So 15 months into a 24-month timetable, the program is stalled, and it is not clear what could get it going again. The issue is important to bilateral U.S.-Vietnamese relations and in domestic American politics.

Diplomatic Relations

American leaders have told Hanoi that progress on clearing up the fate of the missing Americans--”the fullest possible accounting”--would be helpful in establishing diplomatic relations between Washington and Hanoi. But they have also said that there can be no norma1818851937140,000 occupation troops from Cambodia.

Both sides in the past have talked of the missing servicemen as a humanitarian issue that should be pursued separately from any political differences, but politics apparently has entered the picture in recent months.

A total of 2,422 Americans remain unaccounted for from the war--1,782 in Vietnam, about 500 in Laos and about 100 in Cambodia.