ACCESSION NUMBER:296474

FILE ID:EPF509

DATE:07/23/93

TITLE:VIETNAMESE AMNESTY MAY HAVE RESOLVED A POW/MIA CASE (07/23/93)

TEXT:*93072309.EPF

*EPF509  07/23/93 *



VIETNAMESE AMNESTY MAY HAVE RESOLVED A POW/MIA CASE

(Article on HFRC subcommittee hearing 7/22)  (470)

By John A. Miller

USIA Staff Writer

Washington -- A Vietnamese amnesty program may have helped resolve a POW/MIA

case according to testimony during a Congressional hearing July 22.  In

answer to tough questioning from Congressmen, State Department and Pentagon

officials  defended their investigation of documents in Russian archives

related to the POW/MIA issue.



Testifying before the House Foreign Affairs Subcommittee on East Asia

Pacific Affairs were Deputy Assistant Secretary of State Kenneth Quinn and

Acting Deputy Assistant Secretary of Defense Edward Ross.  They were both

part of just-completed Special Presidential Delegation to Vietnam on

POW/MIA matters.



Rep. Gary Ackerman (Democrat of New York), who chaired the hearing, asked if

the Vietnamese government had provided maximum cooperation and what more

they could be specifically asked to do.  Quinn replied that the Vietnamese

government might enhance its amnesty program.  He said the program permits

Vietnamese to turn in without penalty human remains they have acquired for

possible sale or in the hope of special treatment in emigrating to the U.S.

 The program has already yielded many remains and may have already cleared

up one American POW/MIA case, Quinn said.



Quinn said the Vietnamese could advertise the amnesty program more

extensively, and the U.S. has offered to pay for this.  Ackerman suggested

giving the Vietnamese government a specific deadline for responding to this

proposal.



In response to questions by Delegate Eni Faleomavaega (Democrat of American

Samoa), Ross said that the U.S. has provided the Vietnamese with everything

the U.S. knows about every missing serviceman.  Ross added that the U.S.

has urged the Vietnamese to focus especially on 135 discrepancy cases,

because these are the best candidates to still be alive.



Rep. Dana Rohrabacher (Republican of California) suggested that the U.S.

present the Vietnamese with a specific list of political prisoners and

others in Vietnam who the U.S. feels may be subjected to human rights

violations.



Representative Benjamin Gilman (Republican of New York) directed the

subcommittee's attention to POW/MIA-related documents recently found in

Russian archives.  Quinn said that "This is, by everybody's agreement, a

1lawed document."  Ross said the U.S. staff of ten working on the POW/MIA

issue in Moscow "have aggressively pursued documents."  He added that he

thought there are probably many more "Russian intelligence documents of

interest to us."



When Ross said that the document in question was initially outside the

U.S.-Russian joint task force search because it involved POWs not on

Russian soil, Ackerman directed that a formal request be made to the task

force to include such documents in future searches.



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