adminThe United States dropped more bombs on the Southeast Asian nation than it did on Germany and Japan combined in World War II in a futile effort to destroy North Vietnamese supply lines to the South along the Ho Chi Minh trail. More than three decades after the Vietnam War’s end, the country is still struggling to rid itself of an estimated 80 million cluster munitions and other unexploded ordnance that kill and maim as many as 100 people a year.
“Here in Laos, the past is always with us,” Clinton said after touring a centre that makes prosthetic devices for victims and whose visitors’ centre includes hanging sculptures made from dangling cluster bomblets and from worn-out prosthetic limbs.
Clinton’s roughly four-hour stop in the one-party Communist state was the first by a US secretary of state since John Foster Dulles visited Vientiane in 1955.
“I am lucky because I got help . . . but so many survivors are without help. Their life is very very hard.”
“You are absolutely right,” Clinton replied. “We need to do more.” — Reuters
Online Reporter