From: Nhan Tran <tran@peora.sdc.ccur.com>
Subject: NEWS/VN: Search for US MIAs in North VN
Originator: anh@media-lab.media.mit.edu
Reply-To: Nhan
Organization: SCV Relay
Date: Fri, 28 Aug 1992 22:03:20 GMT


08/26

INVESTIGATOR HUNTS FOR MIA AMERICANS IN NORTH

    By Kathleen Callo
    DIEN BIEN PHU, Vietnam, Aug 26, Reuter - A U.S. investigator has been
searching for missing Americans in Vietnam's remote north-west, local officials
said.
    They said a U.S. investigator visited Son La last week following a June
visit to Dien Bien Phu. He was checking on supposed live sightings of Americans
reportedly being held prisoner or remains of U.S. soldiers killed in the Vietnam
War.
    Lo Van Anh, deputy head of the Dien Bien Phu People's Committee, told
Reuters the investigator found nothing.
    "The American side always insists that Vietnam is still keeping American
prisoners and still holding on to remains. Please tell them the truth -- that
there are no such prisoners or remains," Anh said.
    The investigations are part of stepped-up efforts by Washington to answer
questions about the fate of missing American servicemen from the war.
    The United States has made Vietnamese cooperation on that issue a
precondition for eventually normalising relations and lifting a U.S. trade
embargo against Hanoi.
    Washington lists 2,266 servicemen as presumed dead in Indochina but whose
remains were not recovered or who were otherwise unaccounted for.
    The United States says it wants answers from the Vietnamese government on
the fate of a few dozen of those 2,266, who might have survived plane crashes
and been captured.
    The U.S. investigator declined to give Reuters details of his mission in Son
La on August 20 and asked not to be identified.
    But Vietnamese officials there said he had come to check rumours that about
20 Americans were being held or were living in a cave in that isolated
mountainous area.
    Tran Minh Dung, deputy chairman of the people's committee in Son La, said in
an interview in Son La last week that provincial authorities would do everything
they could to help the U.S. official with his investigation.
    Dung said it was the fifth time U.S. experts had come to Son La in search of
remains or clues of missing Americans.
    News reports in Washington earlier this month quoted a U.S. official as
saying Vietnam had reneged on an earlier agreement to help with the
"live-sighting" investigations.
    But the head of the U.S. office in Hanoi in charge of the issue,
Lieutenant-Colonel Jack Donovan, said on August 17 that the investigations were
back on track.
    The Vietnamese government has repeatedly said it released all U.S. prisoners
of war in 1973. People in and around Dien Bien Phu said they were bewildered by
the rumours that Americans were still being held.
    "I think these are fake reports," said Vu Cao Thang, a Vietnamese army
captain who gave a visiting journalist a tour of the museum in Dien Bien Phu on
Saturday.
    "I guess someone just wants to make himself important, so he invents a
story," he said.
    Thang described the 1954 battle at Dien Bien Phu in which Viet Minh forces
laid siege to and overran a French garrison here, thus ending colonial rule in
Indochina.
    People here say they are pleased to see French tourists, including veterans
of Dien Bien Phu, coming back to visit, and that they wish the United States
could also put aside its bitterness and forge a new friendship with Vietnam.
    Pierre Schoendoerffer, a French army cameraman who served at Dien Bien Phu,
was captured and survived jungle prison camps where thousands of French soldiers
died, returned to Vietnam a few years ago to make a film on the battle.
    He wrote in the museum visitors' book about his memories of the dead
soldiers.
    "I think of my comrades and I think of your comrades. May they sleep in
peace on this ground. May the future be good and happy for Vietnam, which has
suffered so much. I loved this country 35 years ago, here. I love it as much
today," he wrote.



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