One non-profit group estimates about one-third of those bombs did not explode when they were dropped.
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“There was blood everywhere”, his father said.
“If you make me mad, in all honesty, I will eat you alive, raw”.
Obama was asked at a news conference in China on Monday whether he intends to meet Duterte, as planned, at a gathering in Laos this week of the Association of Southeast Asian Nations. The outreach is a core element of Obama’s attempt to focus US policy on Asia in order to counter China’s dominance in the region and ensure a foothold in growing markets.
Obama’s Asia project dubbed his pivot or rebalance has yielded uneven results, as conflict in the Middle East has continued to demand attention and China has bristled at what it views as meddling in its backyard.
For Obama, the visit is a capstone to his years-long effort to bolster relations with Southeast Asian countries long overlooked by the United States.
So with just four months left in office, Obama used his historic trip to Laos to reassert his aims. The U.S. has been a major financial supporter of the Philippine military effort. He made a plug for the massive Trans-Pacific Partnership free trade agreement, the policy’s central economic component that is now stuck in Congress. He’s lashed out at statements from the United Nations and the U.S., responding to comments from U.S. Ambassador Philip Goldberg by calling him a homosexual.
“We believe that bigger nations should not dictate to smaller nations and that all nations should play by the same rules”, he said.
The U.S. dropped hundreds of tons of bombs on Laos during the war, but one-third of those failed to explode, and 20,000 people have been killed or injured by unexploded ordinance (UXO) in Laos since the bombing ended, according to the organization Legacies of War.
A day after announcing $90 million to survey and remove unexploded ordinance, Obama visited a US-backed NGO which helps provide prosthetics to the tens of thousands maimed by USA munitions.
The $90 million Obama announced follows $100 million the USA has committed in the past 20 years. The Lao government, meanwhile, says it will boost efforts to recover remains and account for Americans missing since the war.
As he opened a day of ceremony and diplomacy, Obama was greeted by a military band, traditional dancers and a warm, tropical rain.
Yet Obama’s outreach took an uncomfortable turn just as he headed to Laos from another summit in China.
The pamphlet was distributed at a Southeast Asian and East Asian summit in Laos that was overshadowed on Tuesday by the cancellation of a meeting between Duterte and Barack Obama after he referred to the USA president as a “son of a bitch”.
U.S. president Barack Obama on Wednesday met a survivor maimed by American bombs covertly dropped on Laos decades ago after pledging to help clean up a country he said was still living in the shadow of war.
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The statement from Duterte expressed regrets that his comments had caused “much controversy” and said that he looked forward to “ironing out differences”.
