HANOI DRAWS STERN WARNING OVER RENTAL OF MIA VEHICLES.

Byline: Kristin Huckshorn and Tim Larimer San Jose Mercury News 

The Defense Department has ordered the Vietnamese government to stop renting to tourists U.S. military vehicles intended to aid searches for missing American servicemen, the top U.S. military officer in Vietnam announced.

``We sent a strong message to the Vietnamese government that the misuse of property under their control won't be tolerated,'' said Lt. Col. Jonathan P. Chase, who assumed a one-year command of the missing-in-action program last month. The message was delivered by his predecessor, Lt. Col. Timothy Bosse, in recent face-to-face meetings with Vietnamese counterparts, said Chase.

American officials have since made regular checks to ensure that the vehicles are being used only for MIA investigative work and not private use, he said Friday. ``I think the message was strong enough to stop it.''

The Mercury News reported in April that a Hanoi rental company owned by the Foreign Ministry was renting the U.S.-owned vehicles to private customers and charging the U.S. government for maintenance and repairs. The newspaper's investigation also found that more than one-third of the $11.2 million in taxpayer dollars spent on the MIA program in Vietnam last year could not be accounted for.

The importance of the program to U.S.-Vietnamese relations was underscored Friday with the arrival of Anthony Lake, the Clinton administration's national security adviser. Lake arrived in Hanoi for a two-day visit exactly one year after President Clinton restored diplomatic relations with Vietnam.

Accounting for 1,606 Americans still listed as missing in Vietnam ``remains the president's highest priority in our relations,'' said Lake in a prepared statement. He declined to take questions from reporters.

Lake is the highest-ranking U.S. official to visit since last August when Secretary of State Warren Christopher opened the U.S. Embassy here.

Lake met with top Vietnamese leaders, including officials at the defense and interior ministries, which handle national and internal security. In addition to the MIA issue, the delegations discussed regional security, economic ties, drug interdiction and increased low-level military contacts such as academic exchanges, said a U.S. official traveling with Lake.

The official said the administration was ``satisfied'' with Vietnam's cooperation on the search for MIAs, and that this cooperation had boosted relations in other areas. As Vietnam continues to cooperate, the official said, ``this does help the president decide to keep moving ahead.''

The official declined to answer questions about U.S. government expenditures on the MIA program in Vietnam. The Mercury News report found that the Vietnamese government was charging the U.S. fees far exceeding market prices and siphoning wages and other compensation paid by the U.S. for Vietnamese workers.

Chase, head of the MIA program here, said contracts with the Vietnamese government for items such as wages for laborers and land compensation would only be renegotiated when they expired. For instance, the United States is beginning to renegotiate a contract for helicopter rentals that pays Vietnam more than $2 million annually for the use of three helicopters. That contract expires this fall, he said.

``We need to make sure we're not misusing taxpayer money,'' said Chase. But renegotiating contracts may be difficult, he said. ``We still need their cooperation,'' he said. ``Why will they want to negotiate for a lower price?''

The Vietnamese government, meanwhile, may be losing patience with U.S. insistence on linking the MIA issue to progress on other fronts.

A foreign ministry spokesman suggested this week that there were other humanitarian concerns to address. He hinted that the United States had not provided as much postwar assistance as it should, noting, ``the cooperation has not been commensurate with the U.S. capability as well as VLietnam's needs or the interests of both sides.''