US team to visit Hanoi to seek data on MIAs

A Pentagon-led delegation will visit Vietnam this month to seek more information on Americans missing in action, according to the State Department.

Monitor correspondent Dan Southerland says that in the past, Vietnamese officials have wanted to expand discussions with the United States beyond the missing-in-action issue to other questions of importance to them. But a State Department official said that the US delegation to Hanoi, which is to be led by Richard L. Armitage, deputy assistant secretary of defense, will ''discuss solely the prisoner-of-war and missing-in-action issues.''

Included in the delegation scheduled to go to Hanoi in three weeks will be Lt. Col. Robert Fer, a former prisoner of war now specializing on MIA matters for the Pentagon.