Viet Regime to Repatriate 20 More Bodies

WASHINGTON — The Vietnamese government has agreed to repatriate the remains of what it believes may be 20 American servicemen missing from the Vietnam War, the Pentagon announced today.

The remains will be delivered to U.S. military officials in Hanoi on March 2 and transported to the Army’s Central Identification Laboratory in Honolulu for identification, the Pentagon said in a statement.

“The U.S. government appreciates the initiative taken by Vietnam to repatriate these remains and hopes it represents just one of many continued steps to resolve this longstanding humanitarian issue,” the Pentagon said.

4th Largest Transfer

The upcoming repatriation would be the fourth largest such transfer since the end of the war. The largest occurred in August, 1985, when the Vietnamese returned the remains of 26 people at once.

There are currently 2,404 Americans still listed as missing in Indochina as a result of the Vietnam War, of whom 1,767 are listed as missing in either North or South Vietnam. All told, the remains of 152 Americans have been repatriated to the United States and later identified by the laboratory since the end of the war.

The upcoming transfer would be the third since retired Army Gen. John W. Vessey traveled to Hanoi last August as a special presidential emissary, hoping to step up the process of accounting for missing Americans.