Newsgroups: bit.listserv.seasia-l
Date:         Thu, 5 Nov 1992 10:21:24 -0500
From:         Nhan Tran <tran@PEORA.SDC.CCUR.COM>
Subject:      NEWS/VN: Relatives of MIAs protest

11/04

Relatives of MIAs Protest Response By Bush to Hanoi's Release of Photos;
`Significant Beginning,' Says President; `Complete Sham,' Says Kin

"Price for normalization should be freedom for Vietnamese people", Sen. Kerrey
said

 By Thomas W. Lippman
 Washington Post Staff Writer

   Beth Stewart, a Washington lawyer, says she was "appalled" and "disgusted"
to hear President Bush announce last month that "we can begin writing the last
chapter of the Vietnam War" because of Hanoi's new commitment to give U.S.
analysts access to archives about Americans lost in the war.
   In her view, the United States appears to be moving with unseemly haste
toward ending the trade embargo on Vietnam and establishing diplomatic
relations. Such steps, she said, would foreclose the last slim possibility of
finding the Americans she thinks are still alive as captives in Indochina.
   Stewart's father, Air Force Lt. Col. Pete Stewart, has been missing since
his plane was shot down in 1966. She was a cofounder of the POW Publicity Fund,
an organization that has offered large cash rewards to anyone finding live
American prisoners.
   Some families of missing servicemen, veterans' organizations and a few
members of Congress say that the administration, under pressure from business
interests, is determined to end the embargo and lay the ghosts of Vietnam to
rest, regardless of information that to the activists indicates some Americans
might still be alive.
   The Defense Department has said there is no evidence that any of the missing
Americans might still be alive and are being held against their will. The
number of people who believe there are such prisoners is probably no more than
a few thousand, according to their representatives.
   But their opposition to diplomatic and economic relations with Hanoi is
shared by politicians and veterans' lobbyists on the basis that even if all the
missing Americans are dead, Hanoi has still not met its obligation to reveal
what happened to them.
   Bush's comments two weeks ago were prompted by the Pentagon's acquisition of
about 4,800 photographs taken by North Vietnamese combat photographers and
recently made available through an American researcher. Most of them show
American airmen killed when their planes crashed or were shot down.
   The president said Vietnam's release of the photos and its pledge to make
all its data available to U.S. researchers trying to account for the 2,265
Americans still unaccounted for were "only a beginning" and indicated he was in
no hurry to lift the embargo. But he said it was "a significant beginning" and
added the United States and Hanoi would "cooperate in bringing that painful
era to a close."
   To Stewart, the president has "What did we get? We got 4,800 photographs, of
which maybe 50 we might be able to identify."
   - Dolores Alfond, sister of missing flier   signaled he is prepared to
declare the missing Americans expendable in the interests of political and
economic expediency. Some of them think Bush may grant recognition to Vietnam
before he leaves office Jan. 20.
   Bush and senior officials of his administration have insisted that they are
in no hurry to lift the trade embargo and have not retreated from their demand
that Vietnam give the "fullest possible accounting" of the missing. But the
family and veterans' groups say they can hear the door swinging shut.
   Hanoi's pledge to open its archives is "a complete sham," said Dolores
Alfond of Seattle, sister of a missing flyer and chairwoman of the National
Alliance of Families for the Return of America's Missing Servicemen. "What did
we get? We got 4,800 photographs, of which maybe 50 we might be able to
identify."
   Like Stewart, Alfond wanted to know why the Defense Department regards the
photos taken by Vietnamese as credible evidence Americans are dead, when it
does not accept U.S. aerial photos that she says might show signals from
Americans on the ground as credible evidence that some could be alive.
   Roger A. Munson, national commander of the American Legion, said in a
statement that "this is certainly not the time to close the door on this issue.
. . . Until the POW-MIA question is completely resolved, the American Legion is
opposed to lifting the economic embargo and granting full diplomatic
recognition" to Vietnam.
   "We've never defined `fullest possible accounting,' " said another official
of a veterans' organization. "We're afraid we're going to wake up one day and
be told we have it."
   "I don't consider this (commitment from Hanoi) to warrant much action on our
part," said Falls Church public relations executive Colleen Shine, daughter of
an Air Force pilot who disappeared on a mission near the Vietnam-Laos border in
1972 and has never been accounted for. "The families want the truth, we want
answers. If my father was killed on Dec. 2, 1972, I want to face that fact and
not have to wonder."
   Some family members and POW activists may never be willing to close the
books, no matter how much time passes or how much material Hanoi turns over.
But Sen. Bob Kerrey (D-Neb.) offered another reason to go slowly in a
rapprochement with Vietnam: the lack of political freedom for the Vietnamese
people.
   Kerry, who lost part of a leg in combat in Vietnam and won the Medal of
Honor there, is a member of the Senate Select Committee that has been
analyzing the POW - MIA issue. "I do not believe that the United States should
accelerate the normalization of relations or the lifting of our economic
sanctions solely on the basis of this new agreement" with Hanoi, he said in a
statement. "Our price for normalization should be freedom for the people of
Vietnam."
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