Word: viet
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Once again U.S. jeeps rolled through the rugged countryside of Viet Nam last week, but on a very different mission from that of 15 years ago. Accompanied by Vietnamese officials, two teams of Americans visited several sites north of Hanoi for clues to the fate of U.S. flyers missing in action in the Viet Nam War. The investigators were armed with metal detectors and a rare diplomatic privilege: for the first time, Americans were allowed to interview peasants and villagers who may have seen plane crashes or the captures of airmen during...
...American families who still cannot be certain whether their missing loved ones are alive or dead. With a persistence born from desperation, they continue to demand a full accounting of the 2,393 servicemen listed as missing in action in Southeast Asia, 1,757 of whom were lost in Viet Nam.* "The driving force is the uncertainty," says Ann Mills Griffiths, executive director of the National League of Families of American Prisoners and Missing in Southeast Asia. "We are determined to seek answers...
...after 15 years, the remains of only 190 Americans have been returned, and both Viet Nam and the Reagan Administration seem reluctant to admit outright that most of those missing may never be accounted for. Yet the issue remains politically and diplomatically alive for both sides. Reagan took office with an apparent belief that some MIAs might still be living; at the same time, the President was critical of previous Administrations for what he considered their neglect of the question. In 1981 the White House created a Washington-based task force of more than 100 investigators to probe reports...
...tacitly refuses to recognize Viet Nam until all questions about missing Americans have been satisfactorily resolved. Meantime, U.S. experts have met Vietnamese officials 21 times in Hanoi since 1982 to discuss the recovery of American remains. The meetings have led to two joint searches and a list of 40 U.S. servicemen who died in captivity...
...that Hanoi was misled by former Secretary of State Henry Kissinger into expecting at least $3 billion in U.S. assistance after the war. The Politburo may now hope to squeeze some of that money out of the U.S. by alternately cooperating and dragging its feet on the MIA issue. Viet Nam seemed to be following that cynical strategy last July when it abruptly halted plans for a joint excavation of crash sites. The move may have been provoked by Washington's refusal to agree to low-level diplomatic ties until Viet Nam completes the withdrawal of an estimated...