U.S. Discloses Its First Disaster Aid for Vietnam

Gen. John W. Vessey Jr., a special envoy of President Bush, announced Washington’s first disaster aid for Communist Vietnam on Saturday after talks with Hanoi officials on missing U.S. servicemen.

“Both sides reiterated the desire of their respective governments for an early normalization of relations between Vietnam and the United States,” Vessey told a news conference.

The former enemies have no diplomatic relations, but began talks last year on normalizing ties.

Vessey’s 15-man military delegation agreed in meetings with Vietnamese Foreign Minister Nguyen Manh Cam, Defense Minister Doan Khue and other officials to strengthen efforts to resolve the fate of men missing in action.

Vessey said that all evidence found in Vietnam since 1988 by U.S. experts investigating the fate of Americans who might have survived plane crashes or other incidents “pointed toward death.”

He said in the interview that Washington had allocated an initial $25,000 for victims of a storm that lashed central Vietnam in December, killing at least 150 people, leaving 97 missing and destroying hundreds of tons of rice.

Vessey told reporters that during the talks both sides exchanged views on humanitarian issues concerning Vietnam and the United States “in a frank and constructive atmosphere.”

U.S. experts in Vietnam have said the fate of 82 Americans remains unknown out of 2,267 servicemen who never made it home--dead or alive--from Vietnam, Laos or Cambodia. The others were known to have died, the experts said.

Vietnam says those 82 and all the other men unaccounted for were killed in the war.