U.S. Team to Hunt for American Remains in Cambodia : Indochina: It will be the first such cooperation with the Phnom Penh government, now under increasing pressure from rebel attacks.

A team of U.S. forensic experts will travel to Cambodia this month to search for remains of servicemen missing since the Vietnam War, marking the first time that the Phnom Penh government has ever cooperated in such an effort, the State Department announced Friday.

“We appreciate the support of the Phnom Penh authorities for this undertaking, which we consider an important humanitarian endeavor and which, if successful, will help alleviate the continued uncertainty of the families of missing Americans,” State Department spokesman Richard Boucher said in announcing the project.

Both Vietnam and Laos have permitted a number of similar searches for MIAs, but Cambodia previously had not even replied to American requests for assistance.

Boucher said that the search, scheduled for July 24, will be the first example of U.S.-Cambodia cooperation since a pro-Hanoi Communist government was installed by invading Vietnamese troops in 1979. The United States has never recognized the regime.

From Washington’s standpoint, Boucher said, the project is strictly a humanitarian one that “implies neither recognition nor any change in our policy towards Phnom Penh.”

However, Cambodian Premier Hun Sen may be seeking better relations with the United States because he is coming under increasing military pressure from the 35,000-member army of the Khmer Rouge, the Communist faction that is blamed for the deaths of more than a million Cambodians when it ruled the country from 1975 until it was ousted by the Vietnamese invasion.

A State Department official declined to speculate on Cambodia’s reasons for approving the MIA search.

“Who knows what goes on in their heads?” he said.

A new round of Cambodia peace talks is scheduled to open in Paris on Monday. The five permanent members of the U.N. Security Council--the United States, Britain, France, the Soviet Union and China--are seeking a diplomatic solution to the 11-year-old conflict. Earlier negotiations ended in failure.

The United States supports two non-Communist factions that are in a loose coalition with the Khmer Rouge in the fight to oust the Hun Sen government. However, U.S. officials admit privately that the non-Communist factions lack the military muscle to gain control. Thus, the fight, in effect, is between the Khmer Rouge and the Hun Sen government.

Boucher said Cambodia agreed to permit the MIA search after an appeal from Sen. Charles S. Robb (D-Va.) and Ann Mills Griffiths, executive director of the National League of Families of American Prisoners and Missing in Southeast Asia.

Robb, who met Hun Sen and other Cambodian officials in Phnom Penh, said Friday in a speech to the league’s 21st annual meeting: “This is obviously only the beginning of a process which we hope will allow for the accounting of every missing American.”

The Pentagon lists 2,302 servicemen as missing or unaccounted for in Indochina. Of those, 83 were lost in Cambodia.

Meanwhile, Vice President Dan Quayle said in a speech to the league that, although he will never apologize for his Vietnam-era service in the National Guard, he agrees that the men and women who fought the war made a “far, far greater” sacrifice than he did.

“The men and women who served in Vietnam were heroes--not just because of their deeds of valor--but because they served at a time when words like duty, honor and country had lost their meaning for many,” Quayle said. “For the rest of my life, I will live in admiration of their courage.”

Quayle’s own stateside service with the Indiana National Guard became an issue during the 1988 presidential campaign.