Frank A. Sieverts, 70; State Department Expert on POWs and Refugees

Frank A. Sieverts, a specialist in POWs and refugees at the State Department and most recently a top Washington official for the International Committee of the Red Cross, died March 31 at George Washington University Hospital in Washington after a heart attack. He was 70.

At the State Department from 1962 to 1987, Sieverts held a series of titles that reflected his work on humanitarian issues worldwide. He helped coordinate the return of U.S. prisoners of war during the Vietnam War era and the resettlement of Southeast Asian refugees in the wake of the war.

He represented the U.S. government in discussions allowing nongovernmental relief groups to inspect POW camps in Vietnam and similar matters affecting the fate of war veterans.

After the war, he continued to press officials in Hanoi to search for missing American prisoners.

Much of his work consisted of maintaining close relations with families of refugees and POWs.

Sieverts also served as deputy assistant secretary for human rights and as minister-counselor for humanitarian affairs at the U.S. mission in Geneva. In the latter role, he was a liaison to human rights organizations.

His final assignment at the State Department was special assistant for public affairs at the Bureau for Refugee Programs.

From 1987 to 1994 -- when Democrats were in the majority in the Senate -- Sieverts was spokesman for the Senate Foreign Relations Committee.

After that job, he helped open the Washington office of the International Committee of the Red Cross.

At his death, he was assistant to the head of the Washington, D.C., delegation, and worked on refugee issues.

Sen. Paul S. Sarbanes (D-Md.), who roomed at Oxford University with Sieverts when they were Rhodes scholars in the late 1950s, called Sieverts “a classic example of someone doing good works throughout his life and [who] doesn’t necessarily get on the front page. The consequence of what he was doing gets on the front page: the POWs coming home, or a policy change in refugee camps or a shift in refugee legislation that addresses some humanitarian need.”

Sarbanes added that with POWs, there has traditionally been more political goodwill, but with matters affecting refugees, “you can’t always be sure there will be appropriate humanitarian response” by governments.

He said Sieverts was a “driving force ... to pay attention to these problems and work out solutions for them.”

Sieverts was born in Frankfurt, Germany. His family left the country in 1939 during the rise of Nazi violence against Jews and settled near Milwaukee.

He was a 1955 international relations graduate of Swarthmore College, where his roommate was Michael Dukakis, the former Massachusetts governor and 1988 Democratic presidential candidate.

He studied politics and economics at Oxford.

Early in his career, he worked at Time magazine as a reporter in London and Washington and was a legislative assistant to Sen. William Proxmire (D-Wis.).

Survivors include his wife of 16 years, Sue Hubbell; two children from his first marriage, which ended in divorce; a stepson; two brothers; two sisters; and three grandchildren.