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WEEKLY NEWSLETTER
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Laos
Index
The unconditional return of prisoners of war (POWs)
from all
the countries of Indochina was, in the words of Henry A.
Kissinger,
the chief United States negotiator at Paris, "one of the
premises
on which the United States based its signature of the
Vietnam
agreement." Kissinger said he had received "categorical
assurances"
from the North Vietnamese delegation in Paris that United
States
POWs captured in Laos would be released in the same time
frame as
those from North Vietnam and South Vietnam, that is, by
March 28,
1973.
Under the provisions of Chapter II, Article 5 of the
Vientiane
Agreement, the two sides were obligated to repatriate all
persons
held captive regardless of nationality within sixty days
of the
formation of the coalition government. When the cease-fire
came, it
was generally assumed that the Pathet Lao held a large
number of
United States citizens they or the North Vietnamese had
captured in
Laos, and the Department of Defense listed some 555 United
States
personnel as unaccounted for--either as POWs, missing in
action
(MIA) or killed in action/body not recovered. The Pathet
Lao had
released a number of United States prisoners after the
formation of
the 1962 coalition. There was considerable uncertainty
surrounding
the POW/MIA question, however, because the Pathet Lao had
neither
provided lists of those who had fallen into their hands
nor adhered
to international conventions on treatment of POWs, in
keeping with
their contention that the United States was guilty of an
aggressive, undeclared war against Laos. Conditions of
detention in
jungle prison camps were harsh in the extreme, as attested
to by
the few who managed to escape. Prisoners had no medicine,
and they
had to supplement their ration of rice, both meager and
dirty, with
beetles and rats.
Soth Petrasy, permanent representative of the Pathet
Lao
delegation in Vientiane, told Phone Chantaraj, editor of
the
Vientiane newspaper Xat Lao (The Lao Nation), five
days
prior to the signing of the Vientiane Agreement that the
Pathet Lao
leadership had a detailed accounting of United States
prisoners and
the locations where they were being held and that they
would be
released after the cease-fire. He added: "If they were
captured in
Laos, they will be returned in Laos." On the day the
Vientiane
Agreement was signed, the United States chargé d'affaires
obtained
confirmation from Soth of his previous statements and
requested
further details. Although Soth proposed to send a message
to Xam
Nua asking for the number and names of United States
citizens held
captive, this information was not forthcoming.
The United States embassy began pressing for the
release by
March 28 of prisoners captured in Laos. The question was
whether
the Pathet Lao would consider themselves bound by the
agreement
with its implication that they followed the orders of the
North
Vietnamese. Resolution of the matter was further
complicated by the
fact that procedures for prisoner exchanges stipulated in
the
Vientiane Agreement had still to be negotiated by the two
sides in
Laos.
On March 26, Soth informed the United States that the
Pathet
Lao would release eight prisoners in Hanoi on March 28.
These
prisoners, whose names had previously been given to United
States
officials by the North Vietnamese in Paris, had been held
in North
Vietnam for some time. On March 27, the Pathet Lao
delivered a
note verbale to the United States embassy that
stated this
fulfilled their POW release obligations and demanded that
the
United States pressure the Vientiane government to
negotiate
"seriously" for implementing the political provisions of
the
agreement. The Pathet Lao rejected subsequent United
States
requests to dissociate the question of United States POWs
from
other matters covered by the Vientiane Agreement. The
North
Vietnamese, for their part, did not respond to Kissinger's
requests
for clarification of the discrepancy between the number of
POWs and
MIAs carried by the Department of Defense and the small
number of
POWs released.
The protocol giving effect to the Vientiane Agreement
was
signed on September 14, 1973. Paragraph 18 made the
two-party Joint
Central Commission to Implement the Agreement responsible
for
implementing provisions for exchanges of prisoners and
information.
The names of personnel who had died in captivity were to
be
exchanged within fifteen to thirty days, and all prisoners
were to
be released within sixty days after formation of the
coalition
government. However, the only United States citizen
released by the
Pathet Lao in Laos in accordance with these provisions was
a
civilian pilot captured after the cease-fire. For the next
twenty
years, representatives of the new regime would sit at a
table and
calmly inform visiting United States officials and
families of
POW/MIAs that they knew nothing about the fate of United
States
POWs and MIAs in Laos
(see Bilateral Relations
, ch. 4).
Data as of July 1994
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