Progress on POW-MIA Issue Reported
The United States and Vietnam made important progress toward resolving the POW-MIA issue last weekend in Hanoi after U.S. officials discovered a secret cache of Vietnamese-made photographs of Americans killed in the war, official sources said Monday.
The photographic archive, reported to contain more than 4,000 pictures of the remains of Americans who died in military action or in captivity, was discovered by means that officials refused to disclose. Some of the Americans pictured are still on the missing list because Vietnam has never acknowledged having any information about them or having their remains.
A joint communique issued in Hanoi on Monday by Vietnam and retired Gen. John W. Vessey Jr., special U.S. emissary for POW-MIA affairs, reported that Vietnam has provided additional “important information” on unresolved cases. In the context of “accelerated cooperation” on the POW-MIA issue, the statement said, “the United States will move more rapidly toward normalization of relations.”
The highly emotional POW-MIA question is the only major issue standing in the way of lifting the U.S. trade embargo against Vietnam and establishing full diplomatic relations nearly 20 years after American troops left Vietnam after failing to win a long and bloody war.
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