Hanoi, Aug 24 (DPA) Vietnamese Monday welcomed last week's apology by the US officer convicted of leading the notorious My Lai massacre during the Vietnam War, but said more senior officers should be held responsible as well.

'Lieutenant William Calley's apology for his massacre comes too late, but I think it is better late than never,' said Pham Thanh Cong, 52, director of a museum at the site where the massacres took place in 1968.

Cong, who survived the massacre while his parents and three sisters were killed, said he would 'welcome (Calley) to visit My Lai', and that the officer would be received 'kindly and decently'.

But Cong said apologies for the massacre should also come from senior officers, including Calley's direct superior Captain Ernest Medina, who was acquitted in a controversial 1971 court martial.

Calley was the only man convicted for the March 1968 massacre in which US troops killed some 300 to 500 unarmed Vietnamese civilians, mostly elderly, women and children. Sentenced to life in prison in 1971, his sentence was commuted by then president Richard Nixon, and he was released after four and a half months.

Dung Trung Quoc, head of Vietnam's national historical association and a member of the National Assembly, said he 'truly respect(s)' Calley's apology, but that Calley's senior officers and the US government as a whole should take responsibility for the massacre.