UNIVERSITY DAILY KANSAN
Tuesday, April 5, 1994
7
POW cooperation called a sham
POW search party claims Vietnamese denied prison access The Associated Press
HANOI, Vietnam — Official U.S. claims of Vietnamese cooperation in the search for servicemen missing from the Vietnam War are a sham, a former American lawmaker said yesterday.
Billy Hendon, a former Republican representative from Asheville, N.C., said he and two colleagues had been blocked from visiting what he said were prisons where hundreds of Americans might have been held. The group also was not allowed to meet with people who claim to have seen live and dead U.S. servicemen, he said.
He charged that American officials also were being denied access.
The head of the U.S. MIA office in Hanoi, U.S. Army Lt. Col. John C. Cray, denied Hendon's charge.
"I don't know what he's talking about. I don't know of anything we've been denied in the North," Cray said,
adding that he had not been contacted by Hendon.
Hendon and two other Americans have been in Vietnam since March 20 seeking clues to the fates of Americans who, they say, evidence shows were held after North Vietnam defeated South Vietnam in 1975.
With Hendon are Beth Stewart, a Washington lawyer and daughter of a U.S. pilot lost during the war, and Lamont Gaston, national president of the VietNow veterans group based in Rockford, Ill. Stewart is chair of the POW Publicity Fund in Washington, and Hendon consults for the group.
Hendon said the official U.S. MIA team had been denied entry to at least one of the sites from which his group had been barred.
Vietnamese officials described the site yesterday as a military security zone in Vinh Phu province, 60 miles northwest of Hanoi. They said it was off limits to all foreigners, including the U.S. MIA office.
Cray said that in the past few weeks the U.S. office had asked to visit several prisons.
"We were allowed to investigate and visit each and every one," he said. "We
were not able to verify any evidence that Americans were held in captivity, but we continue to investigate those live sightings."
Hendon said declassified U.S. intelligence documents showed the facility in Vinh Phu province had held 200 American POWs in 1972. None of the prisoners at the site, described as an underground prison, was repatriated in 1973 under terms of the Paris peace accord between Washington and Hanoi, he said.
Hendon said that what apparently was the same facility turned up in a December 1984 document in which, he said, a Vietnamese captain reported 300 American POWs were being kept in a secret underground prison.
The Vietnamese government also refused a request by Hendon's group to interview Hoang Dinh My, a convicted terrorist who reportedly claimed to have seen 30 live Americans and 40 dead ones in 1980 near a prison compound in Thanh Hoa province 120 miles south of Hanoi.
The Vietnamese repeatedly have denied holding any live American POWs.
Five of seven are in custody in candidate's assassination
The Associated Press
Mexico City — At least seven people were involved in the assassination of the man who was likely to have become Mexico's next president, the attorney general's office said yesterday.
The suspects include three men who had been hired to guard presidential candidate Luis Donaldo Colosio at the March 23 Tijuana rally where he was assassinated, as well as the head of the local security detail.
There was no word on possible motives for the slaying, officials said. Five of the seven are in custody, the attorney general's office said in a statement.
The man who confessed to firing the fatal shots, Mario Aburto Martinez, told police that he had gone to the rally alone, but he also said he belonged to an unspecified political group that had thousands of members.
Colosio, as the candidate of the
long-incentive Institutional Revolutionary Party, or PRI, was seen as a shoo-in for the Aug. 21 election.
Special prosecutor Miguel Montes Garcia said Aburto remained the man accused of firing the shots.
Of the other suspects in custody:
Of the other suspects in custody:
— Montes said Tranquilino Sanchez had interfered with Gen. Domiro Garcia Reyes, one of the soldiers assigned to guard Colosio.
— Another guard, Vicente Mayeral Valenzuela, "opened a path toward the victim" for Aburto, Montes said.
— Mayoral Valenuela's son, Rodolfo Mayoral Esquer, interfered with another army security man, Col. Federico Antonio Reynaldos del Pozo, "managing to distract him and thereby diminish the security measures." Montes said.
— Rodolfo Rivapalacio, who led the local security detail, was accused of hiring the other three men.
North Korea has nuclear capacity
The Associated Press
WASHINGTON — North Korea's doubling of its capacity to produce plutonium disturbs the Clinton administration, but there is no evidence that the enhanced technology has been put to weapons use.
The information on the program was provided by the International Atomic Energy Agency, State Department representative Michael McCurry said.
There is widespread concern that North Korea either has developed a nuclear weapon or is on the brink of a breakthrough. Last week, the United States and China collaborated on a U.N. Security Council statement urging North Korea to permit international nuclear inspectors to resume their survey of seven suspect sites.
The doubled capacity to produce plutonium is the result of North Korea's modifying a second reprocessing line.
"it's important that we have not seen any evidence, at this point, that North Korea has separated any plutonium over the last three years," McCurry said.
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