Vietnam returns remains of missing servicemen

Press, 12 May 1984, Page 18

Vietnam returns remains of missing servicemen

By

JOSE KATIGBAK,

of Reuter, in Hanoi

Talks between Hanoi and Washington on the search for the American servicemen listed as missing in action in the Vietnam war may' be delayed until after similar discussions with Australia on its untraced war dead. Some diplomats in Hanoi said that this was a signal by Vietnam that it prefers to do business with its friends first. Cu Dinh Ba, acting director of the Foreign Ministry’s North American Department and its permanent representative to the Vietnamese office for seeking missing personnel, told Reuter that the remains of eight Americans would

be handed over when United States and Vietnamese experts meet. This meeting, first fixed for April 18 and then tentatively rescheduled for mid-May, at Hanoi’s suggestion, was now likely to be held after a two-week visit by an Australian delegation that began this week. Hanoi asked for the postponement for “technical reasons” and a new firm date mutually convenient for both sides is still to be agreed. Mr Ba said that Australian Foreign Ministry and Defence Department officials would visit locations in South Vietnam where six Australian servicemen including

two pilots were reported lost. After talks in Hanoi, the Australians will make on-the-spot investigations in areas around Ho Chi Minh City (formerly Saigon) and Da Nang. Mr Ba said that Australia requested the visit when the Vietnamese Foreign Minister, Nguyen Co Thach, was in Australia in March, and “we agreed to it because they are good friends.” Because of the Australian visit, talks with the Americans would “most probably be postponed to the end of May or early June.” The Australian Labour Government believes attempts should be made to bring Vietnam into the community of nations as part of the process of solving Hanoi’s occupation of Kampuchea. The planned United States Vietnam contacts are the first of

quarterly technical-level talks agreed on after a visit to Hanoi in February of a United States mission led by the Assistant Defence Secretary, Richard Armitage. The Vietnamese official said that the remains of eight United States servicemen found early this year — five in the Hanoi-Haiphong area, two in Gia Lai-Kontum province, and one in Ho Chi Minh City — would be handed over to the United States delegation in small, rectangular “coffin-like” boxes. Each box would bear the name of the presumed individual and United States specialists in Hawaii would try to identify the remains. He said that the remains found in Ho Chi Minh City were buried in a public cemetery with an identification bracelet and dogtag, the name on which matched that of a marine listed by American authorities as missing in action in Da Nang.

Foreign Minister Thach has said that investigations showed this marine was buried in 1966 or 1967, when the Americans were still in Saigon. The United States has listed 2494 servicemen as missing in action in Indochina — 1853 in Vietnam, 559 in Laos and 82 in Kampuchea. Since 1974, the remains of 88 missing servicemen had been handed over to the Americans, Mr Ba said. Mr Ba said that some of the remains found had no skulls or comprised very small bones. Others had dogtags or other identifying articles. He said that he had heard reports that some “bad elements” in the South were trafficking in bones and passing them off as remains of missing servicemen for a profit, but he insisted these bones were not those of missing servicemen.