Clinton Says He’s Not Satisfied on POWs : Diplomacy: He rules out early end to trade embargo against Vietnam, saying, ‘We’re not there yet’ on missing Americans.

President Clinton on Friday ruled out an early lifting of the trade embargo against Vietnam, saying he is not convinced that Hanoi is doing everything possible to resolve the question of Americans still listed as missing nearly 20 years after the Vietnam War.

But declaring that documents newly obtained from Vietnam may help to resolve the fates of at least some missing servicemen, Clinton also said during a news conference that Hanoi is now being “more forthcoming” in accounting for missing Americans than in the past.

“I do believe that we’re making some progress,” Clinton said, adding that he was “encouraged” by the new information that presidential emissary John W. Vessey Jr. brought back from Hanoi this week.

Clinton also said that while the new information should help answer “some of the questions” about unsolved POW-MIA cases, “I cannot say that I’m fully satisfied that we know all that we need to know.” The unresolved question of missing Americans has been the primary obstacle to establishing normal U.S.-Vietnamese relations.

Before lifting the embargo or taking other significant steps toward normalization, Clinton said, he would have to be convinced that “we had gone a long way toward resolving every case that could be resolved at this moment in time and that there was a complete, open and unrestricted commitment to continue to do everything that could be done always to keep resolving those cases. And we’re not there yet.”

The President’s decision was generally greeted with favor by members of Orange County’s Vietnamese community, who have often been lukewarm on the idea of normalizing relations with their native country.

“I think it’s wonderful,” said Ky Ngo, chairman of the Garden Grove-based Vietnamese American Political Action Committee. A Republican, Ngo was a strong supporter of Bush in the last election. “I feel that Vietnam is still holding information on POWs,” he said. “They are not honest. They are playing games with the United States and the world; we who are victims of the Communists know that they are big liars.”

The-Thuy Nguyen, a member of the Union of Vietnamese Student Assns. of Southern California based in Westminster, said she would urge the President to go even further before normalizing relations with Vietnam; namely by demanding that it honor the human rights of its own citizens.

“They should not only release all the (American) prisoners,” she said, “but they should give their people all the human rights possible. They should grant them the right to vote, the right to trade and the right to a free education. They should be like any other free citizens in a free country.”

Clinton confirmed that the new evidence brought back from Hanoi by Vessey, a retired Army general, contradicts information contained in a recently discovered Russian document, which indicated that the North Vietnamese held twice as many American POWs in late 1972 as the 591 they released a few months later.

The new Vietnamese evidence, which includes prisoner lists, sketches of grave sites and data on deaths in captivity, is still being evaluated by the Pentagon, but it “tends to undermine the validity of the Russian document’s claim,” Clinton said.

The document’s discovery in Communist Party archives in Moscow caused a flurry of excitement among POW activists, who said that it proved the Vietnamese have long been lying about the POW issue. A Russian translation of what purported to be a secret report to the Vietnamese Politburo in September, 1972, the Russian document said that 1,205 American POWs were then being held at 11 prisons throughout North Vietnam.

Questions about the document’s accuracy were immediately raised by Pentagon investigators, however, and Vessey cast additional doubt on it upon his return from Vietnam, telling reporters that the Russian document was riddled with inaccuracies.

Pentagon analysts are now examining two new documents obtained from the Vietnamese in an effort to bolster their contention that the Russian document is a fraud.

Dimming hopes of the Vietnamese and the international lenders, Clinton said any decision to lift the embargo would be “much more heavily influenced by the families of the (MIAs) . . . than by the commercial interests.”

Times staff writers David Haldane and Jim Mann contributed to this story.