More on Remains
By ROBERT BURNS
AP Military Writer
MUNICH, Germany (AP) –
North Korea has tentatively
agreed to meetings with American officials to discuss its disputed claim to
have unearthed remains of hundreds of Americans killed in the Korean War,
Defense Secretary William Cohen said Friday.
"They apparently have
agreed to discuss the number of remains and the conflict in the accounting, and
we would assume there would be a full discussion of returning those
remains," Cohen said in an interview. He was in Munich to attend a weekend
conference on European security.
The Pentagon believes the
North Koreans have only two sets of remains. North Korea insisted again Friday
that the number is about 400. It challenged the Pentagon to send experts to
confirm the claim.
Cohen said U.S. officials
are "willing and eager" to discuss this with the North Koreans
"at some appropriate place," as yet undecided. His spokesman, Kenneth
Bacon, said North Korean officials admitted to the Pentagon this week that they
have in their possession only two sets of remains.
The North Koreans'
reference to 400 apparently reflects an earlier U.S. estimate of how many
Americans were killed on the battlefields in the area of North Korea, near
Unsan, where the two remains were found, Bacon said. A North Korean official
told The Associated Press, however, the actual number of war remains in the
possession of the Korean People's Army is 405.
Li Gun, a deputy
representative at North Korea's mission to the United Nations, said in a
telephone interview that the number was revised to 405 from an earlier estimate
of 415 due to a technical mistake" which he did not explain. Li insisted
the Pentagon was wrong in saying that North Korea admitted to having only two
sets of remains. He said U.S. officials would be welcome in North Korea to view
the remains.
Talks between the United
States and North Korea on recovery of war remains broke off last December when
the Clinton administration refused to discuss a North Korean condition that the
Americans provide humanitarian aid in the form of clothing for all North Korean
children. The Pentagon is willing to pay only the costs of recovery operations.
The Pentagon is now willing
to send a small team of forensics experts to North Korea from the Army's
Central Identification Laboratory in Hawaii to see the remains the North
Koreans have recovered, a Pentagon official said. North Korea says it unearthed
the remains during bulldozing at a land reclamation project. Renewed talks
would be meant to define what the U.S. forensics experts would do in examining
the remains and other evidence the North Koreans claim to have.
Bacon said it was possible
that the talks could go beyond the immediate problem of the disputed 400 sets
of remains to encompass the broader subject of a 2000 agenda for new joint
recovery operations.
North Korea last week
asserted that it found the remains in an area where large-scale American losses
were sustained in early November 1950 at the outset of China's entry into the
war. The area is about 60 miles north of Pyongyang, the capital.
When it disclosed the
finding last week, North Korea also said that among the identifying materials
it unearthed was the U.S. military identification tag of Charles E. Sizemore,
of Rushville, Ind. Pentagon records show Sizemore, a 20-year-old Army corporal,
was declared missing Nov. 2, 1950.
Li said today that
Sizemore's dog tag was found among four or five sets of remains, along with
helmets and other indications that the remains found in this area are American.
About 8,200 American servicemen are listed as missing from the 1950-53 Korean
War. Over the past three years the Pentagon has participated in joint recovery
operations with North Korea and found 42 sets of remains.