White House Urged to Retain Vietnam Embargo : Politics: Groups representing families of POWs and MIAs criticize Senate vote that called for lifting trade sanctions.

A day after the Senate called for a lifting of the trade embargo against Vietnam, groups representing families of former prisoners of war appealed to the White House to delay the move until Hanoi provides more information on military personnel still listed as missing in Southeast Asia.

The largest family support group, the National League of Families of American Prisoners and Missing in Southeast Asia, convened a special session of its board of directors here Friday to plan its strategy in the wake of the Senate action.

On Thursday, the Senate passed a non-binding resolution on a 62-38 vote urging President Clinton to lift the two-decade-old embargo imposed at the end of the Vietnam War.

Alarmed by reports that Clinton may be on the verge of taking that step, the board members and league Director Ann Mills Griffith met for an hour at the White House with National Security Adviser Anthony Lake.

They said afterward that Lake had assured them no decision has been made.

Clinton, for whom the POW issue is especially sensitive because of his avoidance of the draft, promised the family groups last summer that he would not lift the embargo until he is certain that Hanoi is doing all that it can to account for the more than 2,200 Americans still officially listed as missing from the war.

Since then, however, a consensus seems to have emerged within the Administration and in Congress that Hanoi has cooperated fully enough to warrant lifting the embargo.

But Clinton has been described by senior officials as reluctant to make the final decision because of his concern that lifting the embargo would spark protests from veterans organizations and POW/MIA family groups.

Many of them continue to believe that Vietnam is still withholding information about prisoners it allegedly retained at the end of the war.

The family groups have been highly critical of the way successive Administrations have handled the POW/MIA issue.

They contend that, because of political and diplomatic considerations, policy-makers have long ignored spotty but tantalizing information suggesting that at least some POWs were never released.

The family groups so far have avoided criticizing Clinton’s handling of the POW issue, but senior advisers have acknowledged that he feels more vulnerable than previous Presidents on this point because of his avoidance of military service.

In recent days, however, there have been several signs that the Administration is laying the groundwork for a lifting of the embargo--a move that would please U.S. companies poised to do business in Vietnam.

The first hint came when the Pentagon said that documents found last year in Russian intelligence archives were inaccurate.

The documents had reinvigorated the long-simmering POW debate by indicating that Hanoi secretly held about twice as many American POWs as the 575 who were released at the end of the war.

The Pentagon said last week that its analysis of the documents had concluded that they contained numerous “exaggerations and fabrications.”

Along with repeated assurances from Pentagon officials that the Vietnamese are now cooperating fully in the search for the remains of American soldiers missing in action, the dismissal of the Russian documents helped to set the stage for Thursday’s Senate vote.

Griffith said those who met with Lake on Friday argued that the Administration will lose its leverage to pressure Vietnam on the POW issue if it lifts the embargo.