Senators Praise Vietnam’s Help on POWs

American senators who visited two prisons and a remote mountain area on Friday found no evidence of American POWs but came away impressed by Vietnam’s new spirit of cooperation.

The senators also returned with an appreciation of how hard it is to track down the missing in a land of jungles, hills and tropical rice paddies, a quarter-century after they disappeared.

Two of them, Sen. John Kerry (D-Mass.) and Sen. Hank Brown (R-Colo.), flew to the wrong spot in pursuit of a tip that American servicemen had been seen there.

Despite the problems, Kerry, Brown and Sen. Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.), said they sensed that the unprecedented cooperation they had obtained earlier in the week from officials in Hanoi was matched at the local level.

“I think in the last five days Vietnam proved its seriousness in answering questions and bent over backward in showing its willingness to help,” said Kerry, the head of a Senate committee on POWs and MIAs.

“I think in every regard today our expectations were met,” he said.

The three senators are visiting Southeast Asia to seek more information on the 2,265 Americans unaccounted for in Indochina since the Vietnam War.

Vietnam, which is seeking international help to rebuild its economy, hopes to end the trade and diplomatic embargo the United States imposed after the Communist north took over the south in 1975. Washington has said it won’t change its policy until Vietnam helps provide a full accounting of the missing.

After receiving cooperation from Vietnamese officials in Hanoi earlier in their trip, Kerry recommended that President Bush reward Vietnam.

The United States is not expected to normalize ties soon, but Bush could relax the trade embargo or do other financial favors for Vietnam.

Kerry and Brown flew by helicopter to the southwestern city of Rach Gia, where they spoke with officials and inmates of the local prison. No Americans were found, and there was no word that any had ever been seen.

Daschle visited a prison in An Dien, 75 miles west of Da Nang, and said he received good cooperation from Vietnamese officials.

Earlier Friday, Kerry and Brown flew to a small mountain near Chau Doc on the Cambodian border to look into a report that as late as February, 14 Americans were being held in a prison. They found they were at the wrong place.