US Secretary of State Hillary Rodham Clinton yesterday became the first US secretary of state to visit Laos in 57 years, on a trip focused on the damaging legacy of the Vietnam War and a controversial dam project.
At Vientiane’s flag-bedecked Wattay International Airport, Clinton was given flowers by girls in traditional purple-silk costumes, as she began her brief but historic trip.
“It’s a pretty big deal for the Laotians, and we will underscore a number of areas that we’re working on together,” a senior US official said.
Photo: AFP
These include leftover ordnance from the war that ended in 1975, excavating the remains of US soldiers missing in action and the continuing effects of defoliant Agent Orange, used by the US to try to flush out communist forces.
Clinton, whose four-hour whirlwind trip has been front page news in Laos this week, met with Laotian Prime Minister Thongsing Thammavong at his office in an elegant white-columned building with two large elephant statues outside.
The pair had “substantive discussions on the broadening bilateral cooperation,” a joint statement released after the meeting said.
The two “agreed to improve and further facilitate the accounting operations for American personnel still missing from the Indochina War era” and address the “remaining challenges” of unexploded ordnance, the statement said.
They also discussed the forthcoming entry of Laos into the WTO.
Clinton is only the second US secretary of state to visit Laos after John Foster Dulles, who spent a day in the then-monarchy in 1955. Experts say that all those years ago, they had to clear the water buffalo from the Vientiane airport runway so his plane could land.
Clinton was invited by Laotian Foreign Minister Thongloun Sisoulith in 2010, who was the first top Laotian official to visit Washington since the Soviet-backed communist rebels swept to power, ousting the monarchy, in 1975.
US relations with Laos, while never severed, were long tense, in part over its campaign against the Hmong hill people who assisted US forces during the Vietnam War.
However, the US established normal trade ties with Laos in 2004 and annual US aid to Laos will be around US$30 million in total this year, a US embassy official said.
Of that, US$9.2 million will be set aside this year for cleaning up unexploded ordnance (UXO). US forces dropped more than 2 million tonnes of ordnance on Laos between 1964 and 1973 in about 580,000 bombing missions to cut off North Vietnamese supply lines.
As a result, Laos is the most heavily bombed country, per capita, in history. About 30 percent of the ordnance failed to detonate and all 17 of the country’s provinces still suffer from UXO contamination.
Clinton, who also visited a US-funded orthotic and prosthetic center, discussed “ongoing bilateral cooperation to help resolve the challenges associated with UXO” with Thammavong.
Another of the main thrusts of the trip is talks on controversial plans by Laos to build a massive dam on the Mekong River.
During regional talks in Bali last year, Clinton called for a moratorium on dam building along the river. Activists say the dam projects could spell disaster for 60 million people who depend on the Mekong waterway.
See FOR on page 9
The collapse of the Swiss Birch glacier serves as a chilling warning of the escalating dangers faced by communities worldwide living under the shadow of fragile ice, particularly in Asia, experts said. Footage of the collapse on Wednesday showed a huge cloud of ice and rubble hurtling down the mountainside into the hamlet of Blatten. Swiss Development Cooperation disaster risk reduction adviser Ali Neumann said that while the role of climate change in the case of Blatten “still needs to be investigated,” the wider impacts were clear on the cryosphere — the part of the world covered by frozen water. “Climate change and
Poland is set to hold a presidential runoff election today between two candidates offering starkly different visions for the country’s future. The winner would succeed Polish President Andrzej Duda, a conservative who is finishing his second and final term. The outcome would determine whether Poland embraces a nationalist populist trajectory or pivots more fully toward liberal, pro-European policies. An exit poll by Ipsos would be released when polls close today at 9pm local time, with a margin of error of plus or minus 2 percentage points. Final results are expected tomorrow. Whoever wins can be expected to either help or hinder the
DENIAL: Musk said that the ‘New York Times was lying their ass off,’ after it reported he used so much drugs that he developed bladder problems Elon Musk on Saturday denied a report that he used ketamine and other drugs extensively last year on the US presidential campaign trail. The New York Times on Friday reported that the billionaire adviser to US President Donald Trump used so much ketamine, a powerful anesthetic, that he developed bladder problems. The newspaper said the world’s richest person also took ecstasy and mushrooms, and traveled with a pill box last year, adding that it was not known whether Musk also took drugs while heading the so-called US Department of Government Efficiency (DOGE) after Trump took power in January. In a
It turns out that looming collision between our Milky Way and Andromeda galaxies might not happen after all. Astronomers on Monday said that the probability of the two spiral galaxies colliding is less than previously thought, with a 50-50 chance within the next 10 billion years. That is essentially a coin flip, but still better odds than previous estimates and farther out in time. “As it stands, proclamations of the impending demise of our galaxy seem greatly exaggerated,” the Finnish-led team wrote in a study appearing in Nature Astronomy. While good news for the Milky Way galaxy, the latest forecast might be moot
RSS