Hanoi agrees U.S. ships join search for servicemen http://today.reuters.com/news/articlenews.aspx?type=newsOne&storyID=2007-01-22T154339Z_01_HAN52089_RTRUKOC_0_US-VIETNAM-USA-NAVY.xml&WTmodLoc=Home-C2-TopNews-newsOne-6
Mon Jan 22, 2007
HANOI (Reuters) - Vietnam has agreed for the first time to allow U.S. Navy ships to search at sea for Americans missing in action from the war more than three decades ago, the Commander of the U.S. Pacific Fleet said on Monday.
"There's no specificity to when that would occur but I think it is a very positive step forward in being able to resolve some of the over-the-water losses," Admiral Gary Roughead told reporters on a visit to Vietnam. He said the Vietnamese government and the United States reached agreement on use of U.S. ships in December.
Accounting for America's missing in action from the war that began in the early 1960s and ended in 1975 has been a priority of U.S. veterans' groups and successive administrations.
About 58,000 Americans and three million Vietnamese were killed and several thousand unaccounted for.
The communist government and Washington established diplomatic ties in 1995, one year after the United States lifted a trade embargo on the impoverished Southeast Asian country.
At first, the relationship centered around the search for remains of missing in action but it has matured into a friendship founded on trade and business ties and also includes cooperation in fighting diseases such as HIV and AIDS and avian flu.
Admiral Roughead said that in Southeast Asia, the fleet was focused on humanitarian assistance, particularly medical care.
He said his discussions in Vietnam included ways the two navies could cooperate on search and rescue operations and weather forecasting for the typhoons that hit the coast every year, killing hundreds of people, destroying homes and causing millions of dollars in damage.
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