Cambodia has agreed to resume a search effort with the US for the remains of Americans killed in the Vietnam War, the Cambodian Ministry of Foreign Affairs said yesterday, after suspending the program a year ago as tension rose between the two countries.
Cambodian Prime Minister Hun Sen suspended the POW/MIA program when Washington stopped issuing some visas after Cambodia refused to accept citizens deported from the US following their convictions for crimes there.
Ministry spokesman Ket Sophann said Hun Sen had offered to resume cooperation in a letter on Friday to US Senator Doug Ericksen and US Representative Vincent Buys.
“The letter talks to this itself, especially the words: It is the reflection of our deep empathy with the families,” Ket Sophann told reporters.
Hun Sen said the search program, which had run for 30 years until being suspended last year, would resume even though the visa curbs had “unjustly sanctioned” Cambodia.
“As we have discussed before, and at your personal request, as well as that made by other US organizations, my government, in the same compassionate spirit, agreed to resume this important POW/MIA field mission, regardless [of] the United States visa restriction in place,” Hun Sen wrote.
The US Embassy in the Cambodian capital of Phnom Penh declined to comment.
Hun Sen has said that the remains of half of the 80 US soldiers who went missing in Cambodia during the war in neighboring Vietnam have been found.
Even after it ended in 1975, the Vietnam War remains an emotive issue in Cambodia.
Hun Sen’s ruling party won all 125 parliamentary seats in a July election that the UN and Western countries have described as flawed.
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