Can't really see enough of the object to determine where all those edges (connected to the vertices in question) go to. Try the Target Weld - if that refuses to play ball then the reason is because if those vertices were welded it would produce an invalid mesh. The edges would need to be "open" - have a poly on only one side of them - for the weld to work. Would have to see the real object (post the scene, zipped, as an attachment to a reply) to be certain.
Max 2016 (SP1/EXT1)
Win7Pro x64 (SP1). i5-3570K @ 4.4GHz, 8Gb Ram, DX11.
nVidia GTX760 (2GB) (Driver 430.86).