Vietnam seeks U.S. assistance to identify war dead

A Vietnamese delegation from the National Steering Committee 515, led by Senior Lieutenant General Nguyen Van Gau, met with the U.S. Defense POW/MIA Accounting Agency (DPAA) in Washington to discuss the identification of fallen soldiers.

Vietnam has requested that the United States accelerate the declassification and transfer of relevant records and documents. The delegation also called for U.S. veterans to provide information regarding the burial sites of Vietnamese soldiers. To improve identification capabilities, Vietnam proposed that the DPAA share technical procedures and advanced solutions, such as Next-Generation Sequencing (NGS), Single Nucleotide Polymorphism (SNP) techniques, and stable isotope analysis.

The meeting reviewed decades of humanitarian cooperation, including the recovery and repatriation of hundreds of U.S. servicemen. Vietnam seeks further assistance in forensic skeletal anthropology, mitochondrial and nuclear DNA testing, and specialized equipment and training to strengthen the expertise of Vietnamese specialists.