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VFW Urges Russia to Restore Full Accounting Support

Posted at 09:00 AM on Thursday, November 15, 2007 by LA VFW

WASHINGTON (Nov. 14, 2007) – The Veterans of Foreign Wars of the U.S. national commander’s trip last week to assist Russian veterans with their goal of creating a system similar to the U.S. Department of Veterans Affairs was made more urgent because American researchers have been banned from Russia’s central military archives for the past 13 months.

According to U.S. officials in the Defense POW/Missing Personnel Office, the archives are vitally important to America’s Full Accounting Mission because archival material could help to determine the fate of some of the 88,000 missing and unaccounted-for Americans going back to World War II.

VFW Commander-in-Chief George Lisicki now wants the Russian veterans’ groups to use their collective influence on their government so that America can resume its mission to account for missing Americans.

Lisicki, a Vietnam combat veteran from Carteret, N.J., traveled to Russia last week on the invitation of retired Russian Gen. Lt. Ruslan Aushev, the chairman of the Commonwealth of Independent States Committee of Warrior Internationalists.

Speaking at a joint veterans’ conference Nov. 6, Lisicki urged the 65 leaders to use their combined influence to bring their government back to the U.S.-Russia Joint Commission. The commission was created in 1992, but has been largely ineffective since June 2004 due to a reduction in the size of the Russian government’s executive branch. The U.S. government was told it was an oversight, but no correction has yet been made.

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