The World - News from Aug. 1, 1988

Vietnam’s official media accused the State Department of refusing to soften its “hostile” stance toward improving U.S.-Vietnamese relations despite progress on accounting for American MIAs. Both Radio Hanoi and the official Communist Party newspaper Nhan Dan cited recent statements by Gaston Sigur, assistant secretary of state for East Asian affairs, to back up the charge. Sigur has advised Congress against establishing interest sections in Washington and Hanoi to encourage Vietnam’s cooperation in the search for Americans missing in action from the Vietnam War. Hanoi agreed last week to joint U.S.-Vietnamese excavations of warplane crash sites and to resolve 70 high-priority MIA cases by the end of the year.