Hillary Clinton in still bomb-sick Laos

This video is called Children and cluster bombs: Laos.

Laos calls to Intensify Destruction of Warlike Explosives: here.

From daily The Morning Star in Britain:

Clinton’s Laos visit makes history

Wednesday 11 July 2012

by Our Foreign Desk

Hillary Clinton became the first US secretary of state to visit Laos in more than five decades when she arrived there today.

Ms Clinton met the Communist government’s prime minister and foreign minister in the capital Vientiane today as part of a week-long diplomatic tour of south-east Asia.

In her meetings Clinton discussed environmental concerns over a proposed dam on the Mekong River and efforts to clean up the tens of millions of unexploded bombs the US dropped on Laos during the Vietnam war.

Laos is the latest test case of the Obama administration’s efforts to “pivot” US foreign policy away from the long wars in Afghanistan and Iraq.

But Ms Clinton had her work cut out and many fences to mend.

The US dropped more than 2 million tons of bombs on the impoverished country during its “secret war” between 1964 and 1973 – about a ton of ordnance for each Laotian man, woman and child.

That exceeded the amount dropped on Germany and Japan together in World War II, making Laos the most heavily bombed nation per person in history.

Four decades later US weapons are still claiming lives.

When the war ended about a third of some 270 million cluster bombs dropped on Laos had failed to detonate, leaving the country awash with unexploded munitions.

More than 20,000 people have been killed by ordnance in post-war Laos and contamination is a major barrier to agricultural development.

The US is spending $9 million (£5.7m) this year on clean-up operations for unexploded ordnance in Laos, but it is likely to offer more in the coming days.

Related articles

• Laos & the Secret War. (deadfishflowagain.wordpress.com)