
                         Roanoke Times
                 Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.

DATE: SATURDAY, January 29, 1994                   TAG: 9401290071
SECTION: NATIONAL/INTERNATIONAL                    PAGE: A-4   EDITION: METRO 
SOURCE: Los Angeles Times
DATELINE: WASHINGTON                                LENGTH: Short

POW GROUP: DON'T LIFT EMBARGO

A day after the U.S. Senate called for lifting the trade embargo against Vietnam, groups representing families of former prisoners of war appealed to the White House to delay the move until the Vietnamese government turns over more information on servicemen still listed as missing in Southeast Asia.

The largest family support group, the National League of Families of American Prisoners and Missing in Southeast Asia, convened a special session of its board of directors Friday to plan its strategy in the wake of the Senate action.

On Thursday, the Senate passed a nonbinding resolution, 62-38, urging President Clinton to lift the two-decade-old embargo imposed at the end of the Vietnam War.

Alarmed by reports that Clinton may be on the verge of taking the step, the board members and League Director Ann Mills Griffith met for an hour at the White House with National Security Adviser Anthony Lake. They said afterward that Lake had assured them that no decision has been made.

Clinton, for whom the POW issue is especially sensitive because of his avoidance of the draft, promised the family groups last summer that he would not lift the embargo until he was certain that Hanoi was doing all it could to account for the more than 2,200 Americans still officially listed as missing from the war.

Since then, however, a consensus seems to have emerged within the administration and in Congress that the Vietnamese government has cooperated fully enough to warrant lifting the embargo.

by CNB