Senators Cite Vietnam’s MIA Aid, Ask Eased Embargo

Two U.S. senators investigating the fate of Americans missing in Vietnam said Saturday that they have received “significant” cooperation from the Vietnamese in their mission and called on President Bush to ease the economic embargo against this country in return.

At the end of a five-day visit that included trips to secluded prisons, once-secret military installations and war museums, Sen John Kerry (D-Mass.), chairman of the Senate Select Committee on POW-MIA Affairs, was sent home with a bouquet of red roses and a .45-caliber semiautomatic pistol that had belonged to a U.S. serviceman during the Vietnam War for return to his relatives. The soldier’s name was etched in the yellowed ivory handle.

A decorated war veteran, Kerry warned that if the Vietnamese were not soon shown “reciprocity” by the American government for their cooperation, “there’s a point where you can exhaust your welcome and frankly hurt the process.”

Kerry and Sen. Thomas A. Daschle (D-S.D.) were careful, however, to reassure Republicans on the committee that they are not pressing for an immediate normalization of relations with Vietnam, a move widely believed to be under consideration in Washington.

The two countries have had no formal relations since the war ended in 1975 and the United States imposed a complete economic embargo, including a ban on loans from international organizations such as the World Bank.

“We’re not talking about normalization, that’s further down the road,” Kerry said in an interview. “But there has to be some movement on the embargo. Otherwise this process will grind to a halt.”

The Senate Select Committee, formed last year, is winding up its one-year mandate with a week of hearings in mid-December and a report on its investigations into the fate of 2,265 American servicemen still unaccounted for in the Vietnam conflict.

During the current visit Kerry, Daschle and Sen. Hank Brown (R-Colo.), who returned to the United States on Thursday, presented the Vietnamese with a list of 18 outstanding “live sighting” cases in which investigators have received credible reports of white or black males either in captivity or living in the Vietnamese countryside.

The senators, who also visited Laos on their trip, investigated four live-sighting cases at Vietnamese prisons, including the infamous interrogation center here in Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon) that was once operated by the Central Intelligence Agency.

The building is now a temporary jail, and its director told Kerry that the jail has had only one American prisoner, a businessman arrested in 1990.

Kerry said he received promises from the Vietnamese that the remaining 14 cases will be investigated by Dec. 10.

Although many groups in the United States believe that American prisoners of war were held by the Vietnamese after a final prisoner exchange in 1973, there has been no credible evidence produced to support claims that Americans are still being held.

The POW-MIA hunt is essentially a two-phase investigation: to look into reports of live sightings and to study remains, photographs or other evidence that allow investigators to declare a missing person dead.

The hunt was significantly advanced earlier this year when Hanoi authorities provided a private researcher with more than 4,600 photographs of live American prisoners and dead soldiers.

Speaking of the odd manner in which the information was released, Kerry said, “The fact is that this has been a closed, Stalinist society for years. There are tensions between the military and the foreign affairs departments, and there are some people in the country who don’t want anything to do with us.”

Kerry said that in the past year, the Vietnamese have granted access to their military archives, allowed American personnel on the ground in Vietnam and permitted immediate live-sighting follow-up investigations.