Three Ex-Marines to Hunt for Land Mines in Vietnam

NEW YORK — Three former Marines extended a peace offering to Vietnam today in advance of a mercy mission to that country in which they will look for land mines that may still be in place 20 years after they planted them.

The Americans presented a plaque at the Vietnamese mission to the United Nations saying: “In the hopes of preserving the peace, we come to Vietnam once again, this time to help the preservation of human life. 11th Engineers January 1989.”

While the nine-day trip to be made by six former Marines from the 11th Engineer Battalion, 3rd Marine Division, is a private and, in some ways, sentimental journey funded by an anonymous businessman, it has the blessing of both the U.S. and Vietnamese governments.

The Jan. 9 trip is the latest in a series of moves between the two countries to improve relations. Vietnam, one of the poorest countries in the world, is seeking diplomatic relations with the United States and American aid and investment now banned by a U.S. trade embargo.

Just last month, the United States and Vietnam began joint searches for witnesses of wartime plane crashes in efforts to find the remains of some of the 1,757 Americans missing in action and presumed dead.

At a joint news conference today, there was a diplomatic difference on whether land mines and unexploded bombs still threaten Vietnamese civilians.

The Vietnamese said the mines have all been cleared at the cost of thousands of civilians killed, particularly from the end of the war in 1975 until 1978 when land was being cleared for farming and housing.

“I can assure you that those mine fields have been cleared,” said Ambassador Trinh Xuan Lang, head of the Vietnamese mission to the United Nations.

“They will be there as tourists,” he said of the six former Marines. “They may return to the locations where they were stationed before.”