U.S., Hanoi Plan Joint MIA Search

The United States and Vietnam announced Thursday a joint mission aimed at recovering the remains of American servicemen missing in Vietnam, a move that analysts said could help resolve one of the thorniest issues dividing the two nations.

The search, expected to focus on 70 high-priority cases of servicemen declared missing in action, will begin next month and would be only the second such effort since the end of the Vietnam War 13 years ago.

The State Department welcomed the agreement as an “encouraging development” but played down any broader policy implications. The Reagan Administration has made resolving the fate of MIAs a key element in any movement toward normal relations with Vietnam.

“We hope that progress can be made quickly toward resolving this longstanding problem,” State Department spokeswoman Phyllis Oakley said at a news briefing. “(But) we’re not drawing any conclusions from this effort on the POW-MIA issue.”

Colleen Shine, a spokeswoman for an MIA families group, said that the new effort “is a vital component to speeding up the search (for MIAs). We’re pleased, but I hope this isn’t just empty rhetoric. That’s happened before.”

In recent years, U.S. officials have complained that Vietnam has reneged on promises to help document the fate of more than 1,700 U.S. servicemen unaccounted for in Vietnam and to recover remains when possible.

In the last year, the Vietnamese government has become more responsive, returning the remains of 77 Americans.

The new search mission will be a larger version of one conducted in 1985, when U.S. and Vietnamese teams excavated the site of a B-52 bomber crash and found some bone fragments, but no identifiable remains.

Next Monday, a group of Pentagon specialists will travel to Hanoi to map out details for identifying, surveying and excavating a number of sites where they believe more remains can be found. The 70 top-priority cases involve servicemen who U.S. officials believe could be found but about whom the Vietnamese have provided no information.

In a broadcast Thursday, Hanoi Radio said that Vietnamese Foreign Minister Nguyen Co Thach “welcomes the United States for joint efforts in seeking out and excavating remains of U.S. missing in action in August, September and October this year.”

Analysts said that the search mission could help settle lingering questions over reported U.S. troop graves and explore reports of unconfirmed sightings of live soldiers.

“This is obviously a useful and significant step, since we have a great interest in clearing up as many of the MIA questions as we can,” said George A. Carver Jr., a Vietnam specialist with the Center for Strategic and International Studies. “But we don’t want to let North Vietnam exploit this as a wedge into other diplomatic areas.”

Some Indochina analysts suggested that the Vietnamese agreement marks a pointed attempt by Hanoi to bolster its economy by improving its relations with Washington.