Kerry's comments on the POW/MIA issue

He argued on the Senate floor that normalizing relations with Vietnam would assist the US in resolving the POW/MIA issue when normalization was the only leverage we had to get the Vietnamese to come clean about the POW/MIA issue.

137 Cong Rec S 11173

Mr. KERRY. Mr. President, I thank the Senator from Arizona for his amendment and also for his comments.

The Senator from Arizona spoke about the memories and the pain of the experience and, indeed, the horror of them. There is no Member of the U.S. Senate who on a day-to-day basis carries, I think as much of the daily reminder of that as the Senator from Arizona whose experience is really an extraordinary one.

When I had the chance to be part of a delegation and fly over to Saudi Arabia and to Iraq shortly after the war, I had a chance to get to know the Senator better. I must say, listening to his descriptions of what it was like when he was held as a prisoner in Vietnam and listening to his description of how he survived that crash and, indeed, the experience itself, it was really quite extraordinary.

So there are few people in the Senate who can obviouslyspeak with the kind of credibility and with the directness as can the Senator from Arizona.

The amendment, I think, will assist in the process of making very clear what the Senate's view is with respect to the linkage of the MIA/POW issue and other issues to the considerable discussion that has been going on about economic ties, and so forth.

Again, I reiterate that this Senator does not believe there should be a full normalization or diplomatic ties with the issues outstanding that the Senator from Arizona has discussed. On the other hand, I think there are a number of us in the Senate who believe that moving more rapidly to engage in certain economic exchanges will facilitate the achievement of those goals.

When I was in Hanoi about a month ago, I met with the Swedish, French, Australian, British, and German Ambassadors. We had about a 2-hour lunch during which every single one of them spontaneously looked at me and said, "Why are you people not over [*S11175] here? Why do you not have your people on the ground in this country? You would be learning more, you would know what is happening. If you are really concerned about MIA's and POW's, what better way to roam the countryside as we do and learn and find out whether or not it is possible there is somebody out there?"

I think any of us know that just in the norms of human exchange that if we are there in that kind of capacity, the chance just to have a dinner or drink a beer or sit across a table from somebody, get to know them, have a relationship builds trust and it builds the capacity to be able to garner information.

It seems to me that if we want to have somebody find out whether 5 years ago or 10 years ago they saw an American being held in captivity or whether recently they have seen somebody in the country, you could not speed up the process more than by having some people on the ground who are beginning to do that, in addition to the very competent personnel who have been over there as part of the joint team who are searching for people.

But there are so many doubts right now. There is such a credibility gap that nothing would do more than to try to reestablish credibility and to have people there who without any governmental position or without any kind of formality in their relationship could begin to let us know what is happening.

So, Mr. President, I think this is a good amendment because it sets out the POW/MIA issue critical to all of us in this country and must be resolved. The issue of Cambodia is vital to all of us and must be resolved as an important part of that affecting the pace, though not obviously the totality of the relationship.

Finally, Mr. President, the question of reeducation is as integral to our thinking on these matters because it is a matter of human rights and it is the kind of thing that the United States has just asserted with respect to China and ought to be asserted with respect to any country that refuses to treat its citizens with the kind of decency that those of us in the free world are too easily able to take for granted.

Mr. President, I think this is a good amendment.

A lot of vets are very angry about this.