Vietnam, USA cooperation in MIA search boosted

PANO - Senior Lieutenant General Nguyen Thanh Cung, Deputy Minister of National Defence on July 28th had talks with Lieutenant General Kelly Mc Keagne, Commander of the Joint Prisoner of War/Missing Personnel Affairs (POW/MIA) Accounting Command (JPAC) of the US Defence Department, during his visit to the USA.

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General Cung briefed the host on the outcomes of his delegation’s visits to Washington DC and Texas, and affirmed that over the past years, the Vietnamese Government has always created favorable conditions and actively cooperated with the US Government in boosting searches for the remains of soldiers of both countries, who died during the war in Vietnam.

Senior Lieutenant General Nguyen Thanh Cung (C) at the meeting with the JPAC's leaders

At present, Vietnam and the USA are carrying out the 116th Joint Field Activities with seven search teams.

In 2009 and 2011, Vietnam allowed a ship of the US Navy to take part in searching remains of US servicemen in waters off the central region of Vietnam.

Up to now, Vietnam has handed over 952 sets of remains of US servicemen found in their 115 joint field activities. Among them, more than 700 were identified.

The Vietnamese Deputy Defence Minister hoped that the JPAC would effectively support Vietnam in promptly finding and collecting sets of remains of martyrs of Vietnamese martyrs and Vietnamese soldiers reported missing in action.

For his part, Lieutenant General Kelly Mc Keagne hailed the two countries’ cooperation and shared the JPAC’s experience in the repatriation of US servicemen missing in the war. He wished for further cooperation between the JPAC and the Military Institute of Forensic Medicine under the Vietnamese Ministry of National Defence, and Vietnamese historians and specialists.

In addition, the US general expected that Vietnam would support the US search team in its two big excavations to search for US troops' remains in Vietnam later this year.